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 passer on the road they cut down
the curt good-day. "Buenas," they say, and that is all.
"Go with God," 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 passive 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 passed 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
nobleman 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 God 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 passing 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!"
And with the gloves which a Spanish gentleman still carries in his hand
whenever he is out of doors, he brushed the dust aside.
"Yes," said Mon, examining the steps, "yes; you may be right. Come, let
us make inquiries. I know most of the people in this house. They are poor
people. In my small way I help some of them, when an evil time comes in
the winter."
He was all eagerness now, and full of desire to help. It was he who told
the Count's story, and told it a little wrong as a story is usually
related by one who repeats it, while Sarrion stood at the door and looked
around him. It was Mon who persisted that every stone should be turned,
and every denizen of the great house interrogated. But nothing resulted
from these inquiries.
"I did not, of course, mention Francisco's name," he said,
confidentially, as they emerged into the street again. "Nothing was to be
gained by that. And I confess I think you are the victim of your own
imagination in this. Francisco is in Santiago de Cuba, and will probably
never return. If he were here in Saragossa surely his own son would know
it. I saw Leon de Mogente the day before yesterday, by the way, and he
said nothing of his father. And it is not long since I spoke with
Juanita. We could make inquiry of Leon--but not to-day, by the way. It
is a great Retreat, organised by some pilgrims to the Shrine of our Lady
of the Pillar, and Leon is sure to be of it. The man is half a monk, you
know."
They were walking down the Calle San Gregorio, and, as if in illustration
of the fact that chance will betray those who wait most assiduously upon
her, the curtain of the great door of the cathedral was drawn aside, and
Leon de Mogente came out blinking into the sunlight. The meeting was
inevitable.
"There is Leon--by a lucky chance," said Mon almost immediately.
Leon de Mogente had seen them and was hurrying to meet them. Seen thus in
the street, under the sun, he was a pale and bloodless man--food for the
cloister. He bowed with an odd humility to Mon, but spoke directly to the
Count de Sarrion. He knew, and showed that he knew, that Mon was not glad
to see him.
"I did not know that you were in Saragossa," he said. "A terrible thing
has happened. My father is dead. He died without the benefits of the
Church. He returned secretly to Saragossa two days ago and was attacked
and robbed in the streets."
"And died in that house," added Sarrion, indicating with his stick the
building they had just quitted.
"Ye--es," answered Leon hesitatingly, with a quick and frightened glance
at Mon. "It may have been. I do not know. He died without the consolation
of the Church. It is that that I think of."
"Yes," said Sarrion rather coldly, "you naturally would."