"Although you have not been near Ronda for five years," said the
Spanish Commandant severely to Dennis Shere, "the face of the country
has not changed. You are certainly the most suitable officer I
can select, since I am told you are well acquainted with the
neighbourhood. You will ride therefore to-day to Olvera and deliver
this sealed letter to the officer commanding the temporary garrison
there. But it is not necessary that it should reach him before eleven
at night, so that you will still have an hour or two before you start
in which you can renew your acquaintanceships, as I can very well
understand you are anxious to do."
Dennis Shere's reluctance, however, was now changed into alacrity. For
the road to Olvera ran past the gates of that white-walled, straggling
residencía where he had planned to spend this first evening that he
was stationed at Ronda. On his way back from his colonel's quarters
he even avoided those squares and streets where he would be likely to
meet with old acquaintances, foreseeing their questions as to why he
was now a Spanish subject and wore the uniform of a captain of Spanish
cavalry and by seven o'clock he was already riding through the Plaza
de Toros upon his mission. There, however, a familiar voice hailed
him, and turning about in his saddle he saw an old padre who had once
gained a small prize for logic at the University of Barcelona, and who
had since made his inferences and deductions an excuse for a great
deal of inquisitiveness. Shere had no option but to stop. He broke in,
however, at once on the inevitable questions as to his uniform with
the statement that he must be at Olvera by eleven.
"Fifteen miles," said the padre. "Does it need four hours and a fresh
horse to journey fifteen miles?"
"But I have friends to visit on the way," and to give convincing
details to an excuse which was plainly disbelieved, Shere added, "Just
this side of Setenil I have friends."
The padre was still dissatisfied. "There is only one house just this
side of Setenil, and Esteban Silvela I saw with my own eyes to-day in
Ronda."
"He may well be home by now, and it is not Esteban whom I go to see."
"Not Esteban," exclaimed the padre. "Then it will be--"
"His sister, the Señora Christina," said Shere with a laugh at his
companion's persistency. "Since the brother and sister live alone, and
it is not the brother, why it will be the sister. You argue still very
closely, padre."
The padre stood back a little from Shere and stared. Then he said
slyly, and with the air of one who quotes:
"All women are born tricksters."
"Those were rank words," said Shere composedly.
"Yet they were often spoken when you grew vines in the Ronda Valley."
"Then a crowd of men must know me for a fool. A young man may make a
mistake, padre, and exaggerate a disappointment. Besides, I had not
then seen the señora. Esteban I knew, but she was a child, and known
to me only by name." And then, warmed by the pleasure in his old
friend's face, he said, "I will tell you about it."
They walked on slowly side by side, while Shere, who now that he had
begun to confide was quite swept away, bent over his saddle and told
how after inheriting a modest fortune, after wandering for three years
from city to city, he had at last come to Paris, and there, at a
Carlist conversazione, had heard the familiar name called from a
doorway, and had seen the unfamiliar face appear. Shere described
Christina. She walked with the grace of a deer, as though the floor
beneath her foot had the spring of turf. The blood was bright in her
face; her brown hair shone; she was sweet with youth; the suppleness
of her body showed it and the steadiness of her great clear eyes.
"She passed me," he went on, "and the arrogance of what I used to
think and say came sharp home to me like a pain. I suppose that
I stared--it was an accident, of course--perhaps my face showed
something of my trouble; but just as she was opposite me her fan
slipped through her fingers and clattered on the floor."
The padre was at a loss to understand Shere's embarrassment in
relating so small a matter.
"Well," said he, "you picked up the fan and so--"
"No," interrupted Shere. His embarrassment increased, and he stammered
out awkwardly, "Just for the moment, you see, I began to wonder
whether after all I had not been right before; whether after all
any woman would or could baulk herself of a fraction of any man's
admiration, supposing that it would only cost a trick to extort it.
And while I was wondering she herself stooped, picked up the fan, and
good-humouredly dropped me a curtsey for my lack of manners. Esteban
presented me to her that evening. There followed two magical months in
Paris and a June in London."
"But, Esteban?" said the padre, doubtfully. "I do not understand. I
know something of Esteban Silvela. A lean man of plots and devices. My
friend, do you know that Esteban has not a groat? The Silvela fortunes
and estate came from the mother and went to the daughter. Esteban
is the Señora Christina's steward, and her marriage would alter his
position at the least. Did he not spoil the magic of the months in
Paris?"
Shere laughed aloud in assured confidence.
"No, indeed," said he. "I did not know Esteban was dependent on his
sister, but what difference would her marriage make? Esteban is my
best friend. For instance, you questioned me about my uniform. It is
by Esteban's advice and help that I wear it."
"Indeed!" said the padre, quickly. "Tell me."
"That June, in London, two years ago--it was by the way the last time
I saw the señora--we three dined at the same house. As the ladies rose
from the table I said to Christina quietly, 'I want to speak to you
to-night,' and she answered very simply and quietly, 'With all my
heart.' She was not so quiet, however, but that Esteban overheard her.
He hitched his chair up to mine; I asked him what my chances were, and
whether he would second them? He was most cordial, but he thought with
his Spaniard's pride that I ought--I use my words, not his--in some
way to repair my insufficiency in station and the rest; and he pointed
out this way of the uniform. I could not resist his argument; I did
not speak that night. I took out my papers and became a Spaniard; with
Esteban's help I secured a commission. That was two years ago. I have
not seen her since, nor have I written, but I ride to her to-night
with my two years' silence and my two years' service to prove the
truth of what I say. So you see I have reason to thank Esteban." And
since they were now come to the edge of the town they parted company.
Shere rode smartly down the slope of the hill, the padre stood and
watched him with a feeling of melancholy.
It was not merely that he distrusted Esteban, but he knew Shere, the
cadet of an impoverished family, who had come out from England to a
small estate in the Ronda valley, which had belonged to his house
since the days of the Duke of Wellington in Spain. He knew him for a
man of tempests and extremes, and as he thought of his ardent words
and tones, of his ready acceptance of Esteban's good faith, of his
description of Christina, he fell to wondering whether so sudden and
violent a conversion from passionate cynic to passionate believer
would not lack permanence. There was that little instructive accident
of the dropped fan. Even in the moment of conversion so small a thing
had almost sufficed to dissuade Shere.
Shere, however, was quite untroubled--so untroubled, indeed, that he
even rode slowly that he might not waste the luxury of anticipating
the welcome which his unexpected appearance would surely provoke. He
rode into the groves of almond and walnut trees and out again into a
wild and stony country. It was just growing dusk when he saw ahead
of him the square white walls of the enclosure, and the cluster of
buildings within, glimmering at the foot of a rugged hill. The lights
began to move in the windows as he approached, and then a man suddenly
appeared at his side on the roadway and whistled twice loudly as
though he were calling his dog. Shere rode past the man and through
the open gates into the courtyard. There were three men lounging
there, and they came forward almost as if they had expected Shere. He
gave his horse into their charge and impetuously mounted the flight of
stone steps to the house. A servant in readiness came forward at once
and preceded Shere along a gallery towards a door. Shere's impetuosity
led him to outstep the servant, he opened the door, and so entered the
room unannounced.
It was a long, low room with a wainscot of dark walnut, and a single
lamp upon the table gave it shadows rather than light. He had just
time to notice that a girl and a man were bending over the table in
the lamplight, to recognise with a throb of the heart the play of
the light upon the girl's brown hair, to understand that she was
explaining something which she held in her hands, and then Esteban
came quickly to him with a certain air of perplexity and a glance of
inquiry towards the servant. Then he said:--
"Of course, of course, you stopped and came in of your own accord."
"Of my own accord, indeed," said Shere, who was looking at Christina
instead of heeding Esteban's words. His unexpected coming had
certainly not missed its effect, although it was not the effect which
Shere had desired. There was, to be sure, a great deal of astonishment
in her looks, but there was also consternation; and when she spoke it
was in a numbed and absent way.
"You are well? We have not seen you this long while. Two years is it?
More than two years."
"There have been changes," said Esteban. "We have had war and, alas,
defeats."
"Yes, I was in Cuba," said Shere, and the conversation dragged
on impersonal and dull. Esteban talked continually with a forced
heartiness, Christina barely spoke at all, and then absently. Shere
noticed that she had but lately come in, for she still wore her hat,
and her gloves lay crossed on the table in the light of the lamp; she
moved restlessly about the room, stopping now and then to give an ear
to any chance noise in the courtyard, and to glance alertly at the
door; so that Shere understood that she was expecting another visitor,
and that he himself was in the way. An inopportune intrusion, it
seemed, was the sole outcome of the two years' anticipations, and
utterly discouraged he rose from his chair. On the instant, however,
Esteban signed to Shere to remain, and with a friendly smile himself
made an excuse and left the room.
Christina was now walking up and down one particular seam in the floor
with as much care as if the seam was a tight-rope, and this exercise
she continued. Shere moved over to the table and quite absently played
with the gloves which lay there, disarranging their position, so that
they no longer made a cross.
"You remember that night in London," said he, and Christina stopped
for a second to say simply and without any suggestion that she was
offended, "You should have spoken that night," and then resumed her
walk.
"Yes," returned Shere. "But I was always aware that I could not offer
you your match, and I found, I thought, quite suddenly that evening a
way to make my insufficiency less insufficient."
"Less insufficient by a strip of brass upon your shoulder," she
exclaimed passionately. She came and stood opposite to him. "Well,
that strip of brass stops us both. It stops my ears, it must stop your
lips too. Where did we meet first?"
"In Paris."
"Go on!"
"At a Carlist--" and Shere broke off and took a step towards her.
"Oh!" he exclaimed, "I never thought of it. I imagined you went there
to laugh as I did."
"Does one laugh at one's creed?" she cried violently; and Shere with a
helpless gesture of the hands sat down in a chair. Esteban had fooled
him, and why, the padre had shown Shere that afternoon, Esteban had
fooled him irreparably; it did not need a glance at Christina, as she
stood facing him, to convince him of that. There was no anger against
him, he noticed, in her face, but on the contrary a great friendliness
and pity. But he knew her at that moment. Her looks might soften, but
not her resolve. She was heart-whole a Carlist. Carlism was her creed,
and her creed would be more than a creed, it would be a passion too.
So it was not to persuade her but rather in acknowledgment that he
said:
"And one does not change one's creed?"
"No," she answered, and suggested, but in a doubtful voice, "but one
can put off one's uniform."
Shere stood up. "Neither can one do that," he said simply. "It is
quite true that I sought my commission upon your account. I would just
as readily have become a Carlist had I known. I had no inclination one
way or the other, only a great hope and longing for you. But I have
made the mistake, and I cannot retrieve it. The strip of brass obliges
me to good faith. Already you will understand the uniform has had its
inconvenience. It sent me to Cuba, and set me armed against men almost
of my own blood. There was no escape then; there is no escape now."
Christina moved closer to him. The reticence with which Shere spoke,
and the fact that he made no claim upon her made her voice very
gentle.
"No," she agreed. "I thought that you would make that answer. And in
my heart I do not think that I should like to have heard from you any
other."
"Thank you," said Shere. He drew out his watch. "I have still some
way to go. I have to reach Olvera by eleven;" and he was aware that
Christina at his side became at once very still, so that even her
breathing was arrested. For her sigh of emotion at the abrupt mention
of parting he was thankful, but it made him keep his eyes turned from
her lest a sight of any distress of hers might lead him to falter from
his purpose.
"You are riding to Olvera?" she asked, after a pause, and in a queer
muffled voice.
"Yes. So I must say good-bye," and now he turned to her. But she was
too quick for him to catch a glimpse of her face. She had already
turned from him and was walking towards the door.
"You must also say good-bye to Esteban," said she, as though to gain
time. With her fingers on the door-handle she stopped. "Tell me," she
exclaimed. "It was Esteban who advised the army, who helped you to
your commission? You need not deny it! It was Esteban," she stood
silent, turning over this revelation in her mind. Then she added, "Did
you see Esteban in Ronda this afternoon?"
"No, but I heard that he was there. I must go."
He took up his hat, and turning again towards the door saw that
Christina stood with her back against the panels and her arms
outstretched across them like a barrier.
"You need not fear," he said to reassure her. "I shall not quarrel
with Esteban. He is your brother, and the harm is done. Besides, I do
not know that it is all harm when I look back in the years before I
wore the uniform. In those times it was all one's own dissatisfactions
and trivial dislikes and trivial ambitions. Now I find a repose in
losing them, in becoming a little necessary part of a big machine,
even though it is not the best machine of its kind and works creakily.
I find a dignity in it too."
It was the man of extremes who spoke, and he spoke quite sincerely.
Christina, however, neither answered him nor heard. Her eyes were
fixed with a strange intentness upon him; her breath came and went as
if she had run a race, and in the silence seemed unnaturally audible.
"You carry orders to Olvera?" she said at length. Shere fetched the
sealed letter out of his pocket.
"So I must go, or fail in my duty," said he.
"Give me the letter," said Christina.
Shere stared at her in amazement. The amazement changed to suspicion.
His whole face seemed to narrow and sharpen out of his own likeness
into something foxy and mean.
"I will not," he said, and slowly replaced the letter. "There was a
man in the road," he continued slowly, "who whistled as I passed--a
signal, no doubt. You are Carlist. This is a trap."
"A trap not laid for you," said Christina. "Be sure of that! Until you
spoke of Olvera I did not know."
"No," admitted Shere, "not laid for me to your knowledge, but to
Esteban's. You were surprised at my coming--Esteban only at the manner
of my coming. He asked if I had ridden into the gates of my own accord
I remember. He was in Ronda this afternoon. Very likely it was he who
told my colonel of my knowledge of the neighbourhood. It would suit
his purposes well to present me to you suddenly, not merely as an
enemy, but an active enemy. Yes, I understand that. But," and his
voice hardened again, "even to your knowledge the trap was laid for
the man who carries the letter. You have your share in the trick." He
repeated the word with a sharp laugh, savouring it, dwelling upon it
as upon something long forgotten, and now suddenly remembered. "A
murderous trick, too, it seems! I wonder what would have happened if
I had not turned in at the gates of my own accord. How much farther
should I have ridden towards Olvera, and by what gentle means should I
have been stopped?"
"By nothing more dangerous than a hand upon your bridle and an excuse
that you might do me some small service at Olvera."
"An excuse, a falsity! To be sure," said Shere bitterly. "Yet you
still stand before the door though you know the letter will not be
yours. Is the trick after all so harmless? Is there no one--Esteban,
for instance--in the dark passage outside the door or on the dark road
outside the gates?"
"I will prove to you you are wrong."
Christina dropped her arms to her side, moved altogether from the
door, and rang a bell. "Esteban shall come here; he will see you
outside the gates; he will set you safely on your road to Olvera." She
spoke now quite quietly; all the panic and agitation had gone in
a moment from her face, her manner, and her words. But the very
suddenness of the change in her increased Shere's suspicions. A moment
ago Christina was standing before the door with every nerve astrain,
her face white, and her eyes bewildered with horror. Now she stood
easily by the table with the lighted lamp, speaking easily, playing
easily with the gloves upon the table. Shere watched for the secret of
this sudden change.
A servant answered the bell and was bidden to find Esteban. No look of
significance passed between them; by no gesture was any signal given.
"No harm was intended to any man," Christina continued as soon as
the door again was closed; "I insisted--I mean there was no need to
insist; for I promised to get the letter from the bearer once he had
come into this room."
"How?" Shere asked with a blunt contempt. "By tricks?"
Christina raised her head quickly, stung to a moment's anger; but she
did not answer him, and again her head drooped.
"At all events," she said quietly, "I have not tried to trick you,"
and Shere noticed that she arranged with an absent carelessness the
gloves in the form of a cross beneath the lamp; and at once he felt
that her action contradicted her words. It was merely an instinct at
first. Then he began to reason. Those gloves had been so arranged when
first he entered the room. Christina and Esteban were bending over the
table. Christina was explaining something. Was she explaining that
arrangement of the gloves? Was that arrangement the reason of her
ready acceptance of his refusal to part with his orders? Was it, in a
word, a signal for Esteban--a signal which should tell him whether
or not she had secured the letter? Shere saw a way to answer that
question. He was now filled with distrust of Christina as half an hour
back he had been filled with faith in her; so that he paid no heed
to her apology, or to the passionate and pleading voice in which she
spoke it.
"So much was at stake for us," she said. "It seemed a necessity that
we must have that letter, that no sudden orders must reach Olvera
to-night. For there is some one at Olvera--I must trust you, you see,
though you are our pledged enemy--some one of great consequence to us,
some one we love, some one to whom we look to revive this Spain of
ours. No, it is not our King, but his son--his young and gallant son.
He will be gone to-morrow, but he is at Olvera to-night. And so when
Esteban found out to-day that orders were to be sent to the commandant
there it seemed we had no choice. It seemed those orders must not
reach him, and it seemed therefore--just so that no hurt might be
done, which otherwise would surely have been done, whatever I might
order or forbid--that I must use a woman's way and secure the letter."
"And the bearer?" asked Shere, advancing to the table. "What of him?
He, I suppose, might creep back to Ronda, broken in honour and with a
lie to tell? The best lie he could invent. Or would you have helped
him to the lie?"
Christina shrank away from the table as though she had been struck.
"You had not thought of his plight," continued Shere. "He rides out
from Ronda an honest soldier and returns--what? No more a soldier than
this glove of yours is your hand," and taking up one of the gloves he
held it for a moment, and then tossed it down at a distance from its
fellow. He deliberately turned his back to the table as Christina
replied:
"The bearer would be just our pledged enemy--pledged to outwit us, as
we to outwit him. But when you came there was no effort made to outwit
you. Own that at all events? You carry your orders safely, with your
honour safe, though the consequence may be disaster for us, and
disgrace for that we did not prevent you. Own that! You and I, I
suppose, will meet no more. So you might own this that I have used no
tricks with you?"
The appeal coming as an answer to his insult and contempt, and coming
from one whose pride he knew to be a real and dominant quality,
touched Shere against his expectation. He faced Christina on an
impulse to give her the assurance she claimed, but he changed his
mind.
"Are you sure of that?" he asked slowly, for he saw that the gloves
while his back was turned had again been crossed. He at all events
was now sure. He was sure that those crossed gloves were a signal for
Esteban, a signal that the letter had not changed hands. "You have
used no tricks with me?" he repeated. "Are you sure of that?"
The handle of the door rattled; Christina quickly crossed towards it.
Shere followed her, but stopped for the fraction of a second at the
table and deliberately and unmistakably placed the gloves in parallel
lines. As the door opened, he was standing between Christina and the
table, blocking it from her view.
It was not she, however, who looked to the table, but Esteban. She
kept her eyes upon her brother, and when he in his turn looked to her
Shere noticed a glance of comprehension swiftly interchanged. So Shere
was confident that he had spoiled this trick of the gloves, and when
he took a polite leave of Christina and followed Esteban from the room
it was not without an air of triumph.
Christina stood without changing her attitude, except that perhaps she
pushed her head a little forward that she might the better hear the
last of her lover's receding steps. When they ceased to sound she ran
quickly to the window, opened it, and leaned out that she might the
better hear his horse's hoofs on the flagged courtyard. She heard
besides Esteban's voice speaking amiably and Shere's making amiable
replies. The sharp hard clatter upon the stones softened into the
duller thud upon the road; the voices became fainter and lost their
character. Then one clear "good-night" rang out loudly, and was
followed by the quick beats of a horse trotting. Christina slowly
closed the window and turned her eyes upon the room. She saw the lamp
upon the table and the gloves in parallel lines beneath it.
Now Shere was so far right in that the gloves were intended as a
signal for Esteban; only owing to that complete revulsion of which the
padre had seen the possibility, Shere had mistaken the signal. The
passionate believer had again become the passionate cynic. He saw the
trick, and setting no trust in the girl who played it, heeding neither
her looks nor words nor the sincerity of her voice, had no doubt that
it was aimed against him; whereas it was aimed to protect him. Shere
had no doubt that the gloves crossed meant that he still had the
sealed letter in his keeping, and therefore he disarranged them. But
in truth the gloves crossed meant that Christina had it, and that the
messenger might go unhindered upon his way.
Christina uttered no cry. She simply did not believe what her eyes
saw. She needed to touch the gloves before she was convinced, and when
she had done that she was at once not sure but that she herself in
touching them had ranged them in these lines. In the end, however,
she understood, not the how or why, but the mere fact. She ran to the
door, along the gallery, down the steps into the courtyard. She met no
one. The house might have been a deserted ruin from its silence.
She crossed the courtyard to the glimmering white walls, and passed
through the gates on to the road. The night was clear; and ahead of
her far away in the middle of the road a lantern shone very red.
Christina ran towards it, and as she approached she saw faces like
miniatures grouped above it. They did not heed her until she was close
upon them, until she had noticed one man holding a riderless horse
apart from the group and another coiling up a stout rope. Then
Esteban, who was holding the lantern, raised his hand to keep her
back.
"There has been an accident," said he. "He fell, and fell awkwardly,
the horse with him."
"An accident," said Christina, and she pointed to the coil of rope. It
was no use for her now to say that she had forbidden violence. Indeed,
at no time, as she told Shere, would it have been of any use. She
pushed through the group to where Dennis Shere lay on the ground, his
face white and shiny and tortured with pain. She knelt down on the
ground and took his head in her hands as though she would raise it on
to her lap, but one man stopped her, saying, "It is his back, señora."
Shere opened his eyes and saw who it was that bent over him, and
Christina, reading their look, was appalled. It was surely impossible
that human eyes could carry so much hate. His lips moved, and she
leaned her ear close to his mouth to catch the words. But it was only
one word he spoke and repeated:--
"Tricks! Tricks!"
There was no time to disprove or explain. Christina had but one
argument. She kissed him on the lips.
"This is no trick," she cried, and Esteban, laying a hand upon her
shoulder, said, "He does not hear, nor can his lips answer;" and
Esteban spoke the truth. Shere had not heard, and never would hear, as
Christina knew.
"He still has the letter," said Esteban. Christina thrust him back
with her hand and crouched over the dead man, protecting him. In a
little she said, "True, there is the letter." She unbuttoned Shere's
jacket and gently took the letter from his breast. Then she knelt back
and looked at the superscription without speaking. Esteban opened the
door of the lantern and held the flame towards her. "No," said she.
"It had better go to Olvera."
She rode to Olvera that night. They let her go, deceived by her
composure and thinking that she meant to carry it to "the man of great
consequence."
But Christina's composure meant nothing more than that her mind and
her feelings were numbed. She was conscious of only one conviction,
that Shere must not fail in his duty, since he had staked his honour
upon its fulfilment. And so she rode straight to the commandant's
quarters at Olvera, and telling of an accident to the bearer, handed
him the letter. The commandant read it, and was most politely
distressed that Christina should have put herself to so much trouble,
for the orders merely recalled his contingent to Ronda in the morning.
It was about this time that Christina began to understand precisely
what had happened.