THISBE
It was the custom in the convent school on the Torrero-hill to receive
visitors on Thursdays. This festivity farther extended to the evening,
when the girls were allowed to walk for an hour in the garden and talk.
Talking, it must be remembered, as an indulgence of the flesh, is
considered in religious communities to be a treat only permitted at
certain periods. It is, indeed, only by tying the tongue that tyranny can
hope to live.
"These promenades are not without use," the Mother Superior once said to
Evasio Mon, one of the lay directors of this school. "One discovers what
friendships have been formed."
But the Mother Superior, like many cunning persons, was wrong. For a
schoolgirl's friendship is like the seed of grass, blown hither and
thither; while only one or two of a sowing take root in some hidden
corner and grow.
Juanita's bosom friend of the red hair had recovered her lost position.
Her hair was, in fact, golden again. They were walking in the garden at
sunset, and waiting for the clock of San Fernando to strike seven.
Juanita had told her friend of the chocolates--all soft inside--which
were to come through the hole in the wall; and the golden haired girl had
confided in Juanita that she had never loved her as she did at that
moment. Which was, perhaps, not unnatural.
The garden of the convent school is large, and spreads far down the slope
of the hill. There are many fruit-trees and a few cypress. Where the
stream runs there are bunches of waving bamboos, and at the lower end,
where the wall is broken, there is a little grove of nut trees, where the
nightingales sing.
"It must be seven; come, let us go slowly towards the trees," said
Juanita. They both looked round eagerly. There were two nuns in the
gardens, gravely walking side by side, casting demure and not unkindly
glances from time to time towards their gay charges. Juanita and her
friend had, as elder girls, certain privileges, and were allowed to walk
apart from the rest. They were heiresses, moreover, which makes a
difference even in a convent school that shuts the world out with
forbidding gates.
Juanita bade her friend keep watch, and ran quickly among the trees. The
wall was old and overgrown with wild roses and honeysuckle. She found the
hole, and, hastily turning back her sleeve, thrust her arm through. Her
hand came out through the flowers with an inconsequent, childish flourish
of the fingers close by the grave face of Marcos. He was essentially a
man of his word; and she jerked her hand away from his lips with a gay
laugh.
"Marcos," she said, "the packets must be small or they will not come
through."
"I have had them made small on purpose," he said. But she seemed to have
forgotten the chocolates already, for her hand did not come back.
"I'm trying to see through," she explained, after a moment. "I can see
nothing, only something black. I see. It is your horse; you are on
horseback. Is it the Moor? Have you ridden the dear old Moor up here to
see me? Please bring his nose near so that I can stroke it."
And her fingers came through the flowers again, feeling the empty air.
"I wonder if he knows my hand," she said. "Oh, Marcos! is there no one to
take me away from here? I hate the place; and yet I am afraid. I am
afraid of something, Marcos, and I do not know what it is. It was all
right when papa was alive. For I felt that he would certainly come some
day and take me away, and all this would be over."
"All--what?" inquired Marcos, the matter-of-fact, at the other side of
the wall.
"Oh, I don't know. There is a sort of strain and mystery which I cannot
define. I am not a coward, you know, but sometimes I am afraid and feel
alone in the world. There is Leon, of course; but Leon is no good, is
he?"
"No, he is no good," replied Marcos.
"And, Marcos, do you think it is possible to be in the world and yet be
saved; to be quite safe, I mean, for the next world, like Sor Teresa?"
"Yes, I do."
"Does Uncle Ramon think so?"
"Yes," replied Marcos.
"What a bother one's soul is," she said, with a sigh. "I'm sure mine is.
I am never allowed to think of anything else."
"Why?" asked Marcos, who was a patient searcher after remedies, and never
discussed matters which could not be ameliorated by immediate action.
"Oh! because it seems that I am more than usually wicked. No one seems to
think it possible that I can save my soul unless I go into religion."
"And you do not want to do that?"
"No, I never want to do it. Not even when I have been a long time in
Retreat and we have been happy and quiet, here, inside the walls. And the
life they lead here seems so little trouble; and one can lay aside that
nightmare of the world to come. I do not even want it then. But when I go
into the world, like last Sunday, Marcos, and see the shops, and Uncle
Ramon and you, then I hate the thought of it. And when I touched the dear
old Moor's soft nose just now, I felt I couldn't do it at any cost; but
that I must go into the world and have dogs and horses, and see the
mountains and enjoy myself, and leave the rest to chance and the kindness
of the Virgin, Marcos."
He did not answer at once, and she thrust her hand through the woodbine
again.
"Where are you?" she asked. "Why do you not answer?"
He took her hand and held it for a moment.
"You are thinking," she said, with a little laugh. "I know. I have seen
you think like that by the side of the river, when one of the trout would
not come out of the Wolf and you were wondering what more you could do to
try and make him. What are you thinking about?"
"About you."
"Oh!" she laughed. "You must not take it so seriously as that. Everybody
is very kind, you know. And I am quite happy here. At least, I think I
am. Where are the chocolates? I believe you have eaten them on the
way--you and the Moor. I always said you were the same sort of people,
you two, didn't I?"
By way of reply he handed the little neat packets, tied with ribbon.
"Thank you," she said. "You are kind, Marcos. Somehow you never say
things, but you do them--which is better, is it not?"
"I will get you out of here," he answered, "if you want it."
"How?" she asked, with a startled ring in her voice. "Can you really do
it? Tell me how."
"No," answered Marcos. "I will not tell you how. Not now. But I can do it
if you are in real danger of going into religion against your will; if
there is real necessity."
"How?" she asked again, with a deeper note in her voice.
"I will not tell you," he answered, "until the necessity arises. It is a
secret, and you might have to tell it... in confession."
"Yes," she admitted. "Perhaps you are right. But you will come again next
Thursday, Marcos?"
"Yes," he answered, "next Thursday." "By the way, I forgot. I wrote you a
note, in case there should have been no time to speak to you. Where is
it, in my pocket? No, here, I have it. Do you want it?"
"Yes."
And Marcos tried to get his hand through the hole in the wall, but he
failed.
"Aha?" laughed Juanita. "You see I have the advantage of you."
"Yes," he answered gravely. "You have the advantage of me."
And on the other side of the wall, he smiled slowly to himself.
"Go! Go at once," she whispered hurriedly, "Milagros is calling me. There
is some one coming. I can see through the leaves. It is Sor Teresa. And
she has some one with her. Oh! it is Senor Mon. He is terrible. He sees
everything. Go, Marcos!"
And Marcos did not wait. He had the note in his hand--a small screw of
paper, all wet with the dew on the woodbine. He galloped up the hill,
close under the wall, and put his willing horse straight at the canal.
The horse leapt in and struggled, half swimming, across.
To have gone any other way would have been to make himself visible from
one part or another of the convent grounds, and Evasio Mon was in that
garden.
Both Sor Teresa and Evasio Mon saw Juanita emerge from the nut trees and
join her friend, but neither appeared to have noticed anything unusual.
"By the way," said Mon, pleasantly, "I am on foot and can save myself a
considerable distance by using the door at the foot of the garden."
"That way is unfrequented," answered Sor Teresa. "It is scarcely
considered desirable at night."
"Oh! no one will touch me--a poor man," said Mon, with his pleasant
smile. "Have you the key with you?"
Sor Teresa looked on the bunch hanging at her girdle.
"No," she admitted rather reluctantly, "I will send for it."
And she called by gesture one of the nuns who seemed to be looking the
other way and yet perceived the movement of Sor Teresa's hand.
While the key was being brought, Mon stood looking with his gentle smile
over the lower wall of the garden, where the pathway cuts across the bare
fields down towards the river.
"Would it not be wiser to carry that key with you always in case it
should be wanted, as in the present instance?" he said, smoothly.
"I shall do so in future," replied Sor Teresa, humbly; for the first duty
of a nun is obedience, and there is no nunnery that is not under the
immediate and unquestioned control of some man, be he a priest or in some
privileged cases, the Pontiff himself.
At last a second bunch of keys was placed in Sor Teresa's hands, and she
examined them carefully.
"I am not quite sure," she said, "which is the right one. It is so seldom
used."
And she fingered them, one by one.
Mon glanced at her sharply, though his lips still smiled.
"Allow me," he said. "Those keys among which you are looking are the keys
of cupboards and not of doors. There are only two door keys among them
all."
He took the keys and led the way towards the door hidden behind the grove
of nut-trees. The nightingales were singing as he passed beneath the
boughs, followed by Sor Teresa. Juanita hurrying up towards the house by
another path, turned and glanced anxiously over her shoulder.
"This, I think, will be the key," said Mon, affably, as he stooped to
examine the lock. And he was right.
He opened the door, passed out and turned to salute Sor Teresa before he
closed it gently, in her face.
"Go with God, my sister," he said, bowing with a raised hat and
ceremonious smile.
He waited until he heard Sor Teresa lock the door from within. Then he
turned to examine the ground in the little lane that skirts the convent
wall. But on the sun-baked ground, the neat, light feet of the Moor had
made no mark. He looked at the wall, but failed to perceive the hole in
it, for the woodbine and the wild rose tree covered it like a curtain.
Marcos had made a round by the summit of the hill and turning to the
right rejoined the high road from the Casa Blanca, crossing the canal
again by that bridge and returning to Saragossa by the broad avenue known
as the Monte Torrero.
He reined in his horse beneath the lamp that hangs from the trees
opposite to the gate of the town called the Puerta de Santa Engracia, and
unfolded the note that
Juanita had written to him. It was scribbled in pencil on a half sheet
torn from an exercise book.
"Dear Marcos," it said. "Thank you most preposterously for the
chocolates. The next time please put in some almonds. Milagros so loves
almonds; and I am very fond of Milagros--Your grateful Juanita."
There was a mistake in the spelling.