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 assiduously
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 assured by persons in daily
intercourse with them--persons whom they respect and love--that in living
that life they will assuredly be laying up for themselves an eternity of
damnation. 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 biassed 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."
"I was not thinking of my happiness," said Marcos, quite simply and
curtly.
"Of Juanita's happiness?" ... suggested the Count.
"Yes."
"Then think again and tell me whether you, as a man of the world, can for
a moment imagine that Juanita's chance of happiness would be greater in
the convent--whether the Church could make her happier than you could if
you give her the opportunity of leading the life that God created her
for."
Marcos made no answer. And oddly enough Sarrion seemed to expect none.
"That is ...," he explained in the same careless voice, "if we may go on
the presumption that you are content to place Juanita's happiness before
your own."
"I am content to do that."
"Always?" asked Sarrion, gravely.
"Always."
There was a short silence. Then the Count came into the room, and as he
passed Marcos he laid his hand for a moment on his son's broad back.
"Then, my friend," he said, crossing the room and taking up his gloves,
"let us get to action. That will please you better than words, I know.
Let us go and see Leon--the weakest link in their fine chain. Juanita has
no one in the world but us--but I think we shall be enough."
Leon de Mogente lived in an apartment in the Plaza del Pilar. His father,
for whom he had but little affection, had made him a liberal allowance
which had been spent, so to speak, on his Soul. It elevated the Spirit of
this excellent young man to decorate his rooms in imitation of a
sanctuary.
He lived in an atmosphere of aesthetic emotion which he quite mistook for
holiness. He was a dandy in the care of his Soul, and tricked himself out
to catch the eye of High Heaven.
The Marquis de Mogente was out. He had crossed the Plaza, the servant
thought to say a prayer in the Cathedral. On the suggestion of the
servant, the Sarrions decided to wait until Leon's return. The man, who
had the air of a murderer (or a Spanish Cathedral chorister), volunteered
to go and seek his master.
"I can say a prayer myself," he said humbly.
"And here is something to put in the poor-box," answered Sarrion with his
twisted smile.
"By my soul," he exclaimed, when they were left alone, "this place reeks
of hypocrisy."
He looked round the walls with a raised eyebrow.
"I have been trying to discover," he went on, "what was in the mind of
Francisco as he lay dying in that house in the Calle San Gregorio--what
he was trying to carry out--why he made that will. He sent for Leon, you
see, and must have seen at a glance that he had for a son--a mule, of the
worst sort. He probably saw that to leave money to Leon was to give it to
the Church, which meant that it would be spent for the further undoing of
Spain and the propagation of ignorance and superstition."
For Ramon de Sarrion was one of those good Spaniards and good Catholics
who lay the entire blame for the downfall of their country from its great
estate to a Church, which can only hope to live in its present form as
long as superstition and crass ignorance prevail.
"I cannot help thinking," he went on, "that Francisco dimly perceived
that he was the victim of a careful plot--one sees something like that in
all these ramifications. Three million pesetas are worth scheming for.
They would make a difference in any cause. They might make all the
difference at this moment in Spain. Kingdoms have been won and lost for
less than three million pesetas. I believe he was watched in Cuba, and
his return was known. Or perhaps he was brought back by some clever
forgery. Who knows? At all events, it was known that he had left his
money nearly all to Leon."
"We will ask Leon," suggested Marcos, "what reason his father gave for
making a new will."
"And he will lie to you," said Sarrion.
"But he will lie badly," murmured Marcos, with his leisurely reflective
smile.
"I think," said Sarrion, after a pause, "nay, I feel sure that Francisco
left his fortune to Juanita at the last moment, as a forlorn
hope--leaving it to you and me to get her out of the hobble in which he
placed her. You know it was always his hope that you and Juanita should
marry."
But Marcos' face hardened, and he had nothing to say to this reiteration
of the dead man's hope. The silence was not again broken before Leon de
Mogente came in.
He looked from one to the other with an apprehensive glance. His pale
eyes had that dulness which betokens, if not an absorption in the things
to come, that which often passes for the same, an incompetence to face
the present moment.
"I was about to write to you," he said, addressing himself to Sarrion. "I
am having a mass celebrated tomorrow in the Cathedral. My father, I
know... "
"I shall be there," said Sarrion, rather shortly.
"And Marcos?"
"I, also," replied Marcos.
"One must do what one can," said Leon, with a resigned sigh.
Marcos, the man of action and not of words, looked at him and said
nothing. He was perhaps noticing that the dishonest boy had grown into a
dishonest man. Monastic religion is like a varnish, it only serves to
bring out the true colour, and is powerless to alter it by more than a
shade. Those who have lived in religious communities know that human
nature is the same there as in the world--that a man who is not
straightforward may grow in monastic zeal day by day, but he will never
grow straightforward. On the other hand, if a man be a good man, religion
will make him better, but it must not be a religion that runs to words.
Leon sat with folded hands and lowered eyes. He was a sort of amateur
monk, and, like all amateurs, he was apt to exaggerate outward signs. It
was Marcos who spoke at length.
"Do you intend," he asked in his matter-of-fact way, "to make any effort
to discover and punish your father's assassins?"
"I have been advised not to."
"By whom?"
Leon looked distressed. He was pained, it would seem, that the friend of
his childhood should step so bluntly on to delicate ground.
"It is a secret of the confession."
Marcos exchanged a grave glance with his father, who sat back in his
chair as one may see a leader sit back while his junior counsel conducts
an able cross-examination.
"Have you advised Juanita of the terms of her father's will?"
"I understand," answered Leon, "that it will make but little difference
to Juanita. She has her allowance as I have mine. My father, I
understand, had but little to bequeath to her."
Marcos glanced at his father again, and then at the clock. He had, it
appeared, finished his cross-examination, and was now characteristically
anxious to get to action.
Sarrion now took the lead in conversation, and proffered the usual
condolences and desire to help, in the formal Spanish way. He could
hardly conceal his contempt for Leon, who, for his part, was not free
from embarrassment. They had nothing in common but the subject which had
brought the Sarrions hither, and upon this point they could not progress
satisfactorily, seeing that Sarrion himself had evidently sustained a
greater loss than the dead man's own son.
They rose and took leave, promising to attend the mass next day. Leon
became interested again at once in this side of the question, which was
not without a thrill of novelty for him. He had organised and taken part
in many interesting and gorgeous ceremonies. But a requiem mass for one's
own father must necessarily be unique in the most varied career of
religious emotion. He was a little flurried, as a girl is flurried at her
first ball, and felt that the eye of the black-letter saints was upon
him.
He shook hands absent-mindedly with his friends, and was already making
mental note of their addition to the number secured for to-morrow's
ceremony. He was very earnest about it, and Marcos left him with a sudden
softening of the heart towards him, such as the strong must always feel
for the weak.
"You see," said Sarrion, when they were in the street, "what Evasio Mon
has made him. I do not know whether you are disposed to hand over Juanita
and her three million pesetas to Evasio Mon as well."
Marcos made no reply, but walked on, wrapt in thought.
"I must see Juanita," he said, at length, after a long silence, and
Sarrion's wise eyes were softened by a smile which flitted across them
like a flash of sunlight across a darkened field.
"Remember," he said, "that Juanita is a child. She cannot be expected to
know her own mind for at least three years."
Marcos nodded his head, as if he knew what was coming.
"And remember that the danger is imminent--that Evasio Mon is not the man
to let the grass grow beneath his feet--that we cannot let Juanita
wait... three weeks."
"I know," answered Marcos.