The Velvet Glove Part 8

"You would have made a good soldier," he said to Marcos, when his son at last came home to Torre Garda with an education completed in England and France. "But there is no opening for an honest man in the Spanish Army.

Honesty is in the gutter in Spain to-day."

And Marcos always followed his father's advice. Later he found that Spain indeed offered no career to honest men at this time. Gradually he supplanted his father in an unrecognised, indefinable monarchy in the Valley of the Wolf; and there, in the valley, they waited; as good Spaniards have waited these hundred years until such time as G.o.d's wrath shall be overpast.

"I have a long story to tell you," said the Count, when his son returned and sat down at once with a keen appet.i.te to his first breakfast of coffee and bread. "And I will tell it without comment, without prejudice, if I can."

Marcos nodded. The Count had lighted a cigarette and now leant against the window which opened on to the heavily barred balcony overlooking the Calle San Gregorio.

"Four nights ago," he said, "at about midnight, Francisco de Mogente returned secretly to Saragossa. I think he was coming to this house; but we shall never know that. No one knew he was coming--not even Juanita."

The Count glanced at his son only long enough to note the pa.s.sage of a sort of shadow across his dark eyes at the mention of the schoolgirl's name.

"Francisco was attacked in the street down there, at the corner of the Calle San Gregorio, and was killed," he concluded.

Marcos rose and crossed the room towards the window. He was, it appeared, an eminently practical man, and desired to see the exact spot where Mogente had fallen before the story went any farther. Perro went so far as to push his plebeian head through the bars and look down into the street. It was his misfortune to fall into the fault of excess as it is the misfortune of most parvenus.

"Does Juanita know?" asked Marcos.

"Yes. My sister Dolores has told her. Poor child! It is more in the nature of a disappointment than a sorrow. Her heart is young; and disappointment is the sorrow of the young."

Marcos sat down again in silence.

"We must remember," said the Count, "that she never knew him. It will pa.s.s. I saw the incident from this window. There is no door at this side of the house. I should, as you know, have had to go round by the Paseo del Ebro. To render help was out of the question. I went down afterwards, however, when help had come and the dying man had been carried away--by a friar, Marcos! I had seen something fall from the hand of the murdered man. I went down into the street and picked it up. It was the sword-stick which Juanita sent to her father for the New Year."

"Why did he not let us know that he was coming to Europe?" asked Marcos.

"Ah! That he will tell us hereafter. The mere fact of his being attacked in the streets of Saragossa and killed for the money that was in his pockets is, of course, quite simple, and common enough. But why should he be cared for by a friar, and taken to one of those numerous religious houses which have sprung into unseen existence all over Spain since the Jesuits were expelled?"

"Has he left a will?" asked Marcos.

Sarrion turned and looked at him with a short laugh. He threw his cigarette away, and coming into the room, sat down in front of the small table where Marcos was still satisfying his honest and simple appet.i.te.

"I have told my story badly," he said, with a curt laugh, "and spoilt it.

You have soon seen through it. Mogente made a will on his death-bed--which was, by the way, witnessed by Leon de Mogente as a supernumerary, not a legal witness--just to show that all was square and above board."

"Then he left his money--?"

"To Juanita. One can only conclude that he was wandering in mind when he did it. For he was fond of her, I think. He had no reason to wish her harm. I have picked up what unconsidered trifles of information I can, but they do not amount to much. I cabled to Cuba for news as to Mogente's fortune; for we know that he has made one. There is the reply." He handed Marcos a telegram which bore the words:

"Three million pesetas in the English Funds."

"That is the millstone that he has tied round Juanita's neck," said Sarrion, folding the paper and returning it to his pocket.

"To saddle with three million pesetas a girl who is at a convent school, in the hands of the Sisters of the True Faith, when the Carlist cause is dying for want of funds, and the Jesuits know that it is Don Carlos or a Republic, and all the world knows that all republics have been fatal to the Society--bah!" the Count threw out his hands in a gesture of despair.

"It is to throw her into a convent, bound hand and foot. We cannot leave that poor girl without help, Marcos."

"No," said Marcos, gently.

"There is only one way--I have thought of it night and day. There is only one way, my friend."

Marcos looked at his father thoughtfully, and waited to hear what that way might be.

"You must marry her," said the Count.

CHAPTER VIII THE TRAIL The Count rose again and went to the window without looking at Marcos.

They had lived together like brothers, and like brothers, they had fallen into the habit of closing the door of silence upon certain subjects.

Juanita, it would appear, was one of these. For neither was at ease while speaking of her. Spaniards and Germans and Englishmen are not notable for a pretty and fanciful treatment of the subject of love. But they approach it with a certain shy delicacy of which the lighter Latin heart has no conception.

The Count glanced over his shoulder, and Marcos, without looking up, must have seen the action, for he took the opportunity of shaking his head.

"You shake your head," said Sarrion, with a sort of effort to be gay and careless, "What do you want? She is the prettiest girl in Aragon."

"It is not that," said Marcos, curtly, with a flush on his brown face.

"Then what is it?"

Marcos made no answer. The Count lighted another cigarette, to gain time, perhaps.

"Listen to me," he said at length. "We have always understood each other, except about Juanita. We have nearly always been of the same mind--you and I."

Marcos was leaning his arms on the table and looked across the room towards his father with a slow smile.

"Let us try and understand each other about Juanita before we go any farther. You think that there may be thoughts in your mind which are beyond my comprehension. It may not be as bad as that. I allow you, that as the heart grows older it loses a certain sensitiveness and delicacy of feeling. Still the comprehension of such feelings in younger persons may survive. You think that Juanita should be allowed to make her own choice --is it not so--learnt in England, eh?"

"Yes," was the answer.

"And I reply to that; a convent education--the only education open to Spanish girls--does not fit her to make her own choice."

"It is not a question of education.

"No, it is a question of opportunity," said Sarrion sharply. "And a convent schoolgirl has no opportunity. My friend, a father or a mother, if they are wise, will choose better than a girl thrown suddenly into the world from the convent gates. But that is not the question. Juanita will never get outside the convent gates unless we drag her from them--half against her own will."

"We can give her the choice. We have certain rights."

"No rights," replied Sarrion, "that the Church will recognise, and the Church holds her now within its grip."

"She is only a child. She does not know what life means."

"Exactly so," Sarrion exclaimed, "and that makes their plan all the easier of execution. They can bring pressure to bear upon her a.s.siduously and quite kindly so that she will be brought to see that her only chance of happiness is the veil. Few men, and no women at all, can be happy in a life of their own choosing if they are a.s.sured by persons in daily intercourse with them--persons whom they respect and love--that in living that life they will a.s.suredly be laying up for themselves an eternity of d.a.m.nation. We must try and look at it from Juanita's point of view."

Marcos turned and glanced at his father with a smile.

"That is not so easy," he said. "That is what I have been trying to do."

"But you must not overdo it," replied Sarrion, significantly. "Remember that her point of view may be an ignorant one and must be bia.s.sed by the strongest and most dangerous influence. Look at the question also from the point of view of a man of the world--and tell me... tell me after thinking it over carefully--whether you think that you would feel happy in the future, knowing that you had allowed Juanita to choose a convent life with her eyes blinded."