IN A STRONG CITY
Amedeo, as the world knows, landed at Carthagena to be met by the news
that Prim was dead. The man who had summoned him hither to assume the
crown, he who alone in all Spain had the power and the will to maintain
order in the riven kingdom, had himself been summoned to appear before a
higher throne. "There will be no republic in Spain while I live," Prim
had often said. And Prim was dead.
"Every dog has his day," a deputy sneeringly observed to the Marshall
himself a few hours before he was shot, in response to Prim's
plain-spoken intention of striking with a heavy hand all those who should
manifest opposition to the Duke of Aosta.
So Amedeo of Spain rode into his capital one snowy day in January, 1871,
carrying high his head and looking down with courageous, intelligent eyes
upon the faces of the people who refused to cheer him, as upon a sea of
hidden rocks through which he must needs steer his hazardous way without
a pilot.
Before receiving the living he visited the dead man who may be assumed to
have been honest in his intention, as he undoubtedly proved himself to be
brave in action; the best man that Spain produced in her time of trouble.
Among the first to bow before the King were the two Sarrions, and as they
returned into an anteroom they came face to face with Evasio Mon, waiting
his turn there.
"Ah!" said Sarrion, who did not seem to see the hand that Mon had half
extended, "I did not know that you were a courtier."
"I am not," replied Mon; "but I am here to see whether I am too old to
learn."
He turned towards Marcos with his pleasant smile, but did not attempt the
extended hand here.
"I shall take a lesson from Marcos," he said.
Marcos made no reply, but passed on. And Mon, turning on his heel, looked
after him with a sudden misgiving, like one who hears the sound of a
distant drum.
"Judging from the persons in his immediate vicinity, our friend has money
in his pocket," said Sarrion, as they descended those palace stairs which
had streamed with blood a few years earlier.
"Or promises in his mouth. Was that General Pacheco who turned away as we
came?"
"Yes," answered Sarrion. "Why do you ask?"
"I have heard that he is to receive a command in the army of the North."
Sarrion made a grimace, uncomplimentary to that very smart soldier
General Pacheco, and at the foot of the stairs he stopped to speak to a
friend. He spoke in French and named the man by his baptismal name; for
this was a Frenchman, named Deulin, a person of mystery, supposed to be
in the diplomatic service in some indefinite position. With him was an
Englishman, who greeted Marcos as a friend.
"What do you make of all this?" asked Sarrion, addressing himself to the
Englishman, who, however, rather cleverly passed the question on to the
older man with a slow, British gesture.
"I make of it--that they only want a little money to make Don Carlos
king," said Deulin.
"What is Evasio Mon doing in Madrid?" asked Sarrion.
"Raising the money, or spending it," replied the Frenchman, with a shrug
of the shoulders, as if it were no business of his.
They passed up-stairs together, but had not gone far when Marcos said the
Englishman's name without raising his voice.
"Cartoner."
He turned, and Marcos ran up three steps to meet him.
"Who is the prelate with the face of a fox-terrier?" he asked.
"He represents the Vatican. Is he with Mon?"
Marcos nodded an affirmative, and, turning, descended the stairs.
"I had better get back to Pampeluna," he said to his father.
The train for the Northern frontier leaves Madrid in the evening, and at
this time no man knew who might be the next to take a ticket for France.
The Sarrions made their preparations to depart the same evening, and,
arriving early, secured a compartment to themselves. Marcos, however, did
not take his seat, but stood on the platform looking towards the gate
through which the passengers must come.
"Are you looking for some one?" asked Sarrion.
"General Pacheco," was the reply; and then, after a pause, "Here he
comes. He is attended by three aides-de-camp and a squadron of orderlies.
He carries his head very high."
"But his feet are on the ground," commented Sarrion, who was rolling
himself a cigarette. "Shall we invite him to come with us?"
"Yes."
General Pacheco was one of those soldiers of the fifties who owed their
success to a handsome face. He wore a huge moustache, curling to his
eyes, and had the air of an invincible conqueror--of hearts. He had
dined. He was going to take up his new command in the North. He walked,
as the French say, on air, and he certainly swaggered in his gait on that
thin base. He was hardly surprised to see the Count Sarrion, one of the
exclusives who had never accepted Queen Isabella's new military
aristocracy, with his hat in one hand and the other extended towards him,
on the platform awaiting his arrival.
"You will travel with us," said Sarrion. And the General accepted,
looking round to see that his attendants were duly impressed.
"I find," he said, seating himself and accepting a cigarette from
Sarrion, "that each new success in life brings me new friends."
"Making it necessary to abandon the old ones," suggested Sarrion.
"No, no," laughed the General, with a cackle, and a patronising hand
upheld against the mere thought. "One only adds to the number as one goes
on; just as one adds to a little purse against the change of fortune,
eh?"
And he looked from one to the other still, brown face with a cunning
twinkle. Sarrion was a man of the world. He knew that this expansiveness
would not last. It would probably give way to melancholy or somnolence in
the course of half an hour. These things are a matter of the digestion.
And many vows of friendship are made by perfectly sober persons who have
dined, with a sincerity which passes off next morning. The milk of human
kindness should be allowed to stand overnight in order to prove its
quality.
"Ah," said Sarrion, "you speak from a happy experience."
"No, no," protested the other, gravely. "It is a small thing--a mere
bagatelle in the French Rentes--but one sees one's opportunities, one
sees one's opportunities."
He made a gesture with the two fingers that held his cigarette, which
seemed to be a warning to the Sarrions not to make any mistake as to the
shrewdness of him who spoke to them.
"Speak for yourself," said Sarrion, with a laugh.
"I do," insisted the other, leaning forward. "I speak essentially for
myself. One does not mind admitting it to a man like yourself. All the
world knows that you are a Carlist at heart."
"Does it?"
"Yes--and you must take comfort. I think you are on the right road now."
"I hope we are."
"I am sure of it. Money. That is the only way. To go to the right people
with money in both hands."
He sat back and looked at the Sarrions with his little, cunning eyes
twinkling beneath his gold laced cap. The expansiveness would not last
much longer. Sarrion's dark glance was diagnosing the man with a deadly
skill.
"The thing," he said slowly, "is to strike while the iron is hot."
He spoke in the symbolic way of a people much given to proverbial wisdom
and the dark uses of allegory. He might have meant much or nothing. As it
happened, the Count de Sarrion meant nothing; for he knew nothing.
"That is what I say. Give me a couple of months, I want no more."
"No?" said Sarrion, looking at him with much admiration. "Is that so?"
"Two months--and the sum of money I named."
"Ah! In two months," reflected Sarrion. "Rome, you know, was not built in
a day."
The General gave his cackling laugh.
"Aha! " he cried, "I see that you know all about it. You gave me my
cue--the word Rome, eh? To see how much I know!"
And the great soldier-statesman leant back in his seat again, well
pleased with himself.
"I understand," he said, "that it amounts to this; the sanction of the
Vatican is required to the remittance of the usual novitiate in the case
of a young person who is in a great hurry to take the veil; once that is
obtained the money is set at liberty and all goes merrily. There is
enough to--well, let us say--to convince my whole army corps, and my
humble self. And the Vatican will, of course, consent. I fancy that is
how it stands."
He tapped his pocket as if the golden "piecès de conviction" were
already there, and closed his eye like any common person; like, for
instance, his own father, who was an Andalusian innkeeper.
"I fancy that is how it is," said Sarrion, turning gravely to Marcos. "Is
it not so?"
"That is how it is," replied Marcos.
The effect of the good dinner was already wearing off. The train had
started, and General Pacheco found himself disinclined for further
conversation. He begged leave to ease some of the tighter straps and
hooks of his smart tunic, opening the collar of solid gold lace that
encircled his thick neck. In a few minutes he was asleep beneath the
speculative eye of Marcos, who sat in the far corner of the carriage.
The General was going to Saragossa, so they parted from him in the cold,
early morning at Castèjon, where an icy wind swept over the plain, and
the snow lay thick on the ground.
"It will be cold at Pampeluna!" muttered the General from within the hood
of his military cloak. "I pity you! yes, good-bye; close the door."
The station was full of soldiers, and their high peaked caps were at
every window of the trains. It was barely yet daylight when the Sarrions
alighted at the fortified station in the plain below Pampeluna.
The city stands upon a hill which falls steeply on the northeast side to
the bed of the river Arga, a green-coloured stream deep enough to give
additional strength to the walls which tower above like a cliff.
Pampeluna is rightly reckoned to be the strongest city in Europe. It is
approached from the southwest by a table-land, across which run the high
roads from Madrid and the French frontier.
The station lies in the plain across which the railway meanders like a
stream. Both bridges across the Arga are commanded, as is the railway
station, by the guns of the city. Every approach is covered by artillery.
The sun was rising as the Sarrions' carriage slowly climbed the incline
and clanked across the double drawbridges into the city. In the Plaza de
la Constitucion, the centre of the town, troops of hopeful dogs followed
each other from dust heap to dust heap, but seemed to find little of
succulence, whilst what they did find appeared to bring on a sudden and
violent indisposition. Perro gazed at them sadly from the carriage window
remembering perhaps his own dust heap days.
The Sarrions had no house in Pampeluna. Unlike the majority of the
Navarrese nobles they lived in their country house which was only twenty
miles away. They made use of the hotel in the corner of the Plaza de la
Constitucion when business or war happened to call them to Pampeluna.
They went there now and took their morning coffee.
"Two months," said Sarrion, warming himself at the stove in their simply
furnished sitting-room. "Two months, they have given that scoundrel
Pacheco to make his preparations."
"Yes--"
"So that Juanita must make her choice at once."
"They go to vespers in the Cathedral," said Marcos. "It is dusk by that
time. They cross the Calle de la Dormitaleria and go through the two
patios into the cloisters and enter the Cathedral by the cloister door.
If Juanita could forget something and go back for it, I could see her for
a few minutes in the cloisters which are always deserted in winter."
"Yes," said Sarrion, "but how?"
"Sor Teresa must do it," said Marcos. "You must see her. They cannot
prevent you from seeing your own sister."
"But will she do it?"
"Yes," answered Marcos without any hesitation at all.
"I shall try to see Juanita also," said Sarrion, throwing his cloak round
his shoulders twice so that its bright lining was seen at the back,
hanging from the left shoulder. "You stay here."
He went out into the cold air. Pampeluna lies fourteen hundred feet above
the sea-level, and is subject to great falls of snow in its brief winter
season.
Sarrion walked to the Calle de la Dormitaleria, a little street running
parallel with the city walls, eastward from the Cathedral gates. There
he learnt that Sor Teresa was out. The lay-sister feared that he could
not see Juanita de Mogente. She was in class: it was against the rules.
Sarrion insisted. The lay-sister went to make inquiries. It was not in
her province. But she knew the rules. She did not return and in her
place came Father Muro, the spiritual adviser of the school; Juanita's
own confessor. He was a stout man whose face would have been pleasant
had it followed the lines that Nature had laid down. But there was
something amiss with Father Muro--the usual lack of naturalness in those
who lead a life that is against Nature.
Father Muro was afraid that Sarrion could not see Juanita. It was not
within his province, but he knew that it was against the rules. Then he
remembered that he had seen a letter addressed to the Count de Sarrion.
It was lying on the table at the refectory door, where letters intended
for the post were usually placed. It was doubtless from Juanita. He would
fetch it.
Sarrion took the letter and read it, with a pleasant smile on his face,
while Father Muro watched him with those eyes that seemed to want
something they could not have.
"Yes," said the Count at length, "it is from Juanita de Mogente."
He folded the paper and placed it in his pocket.
"Did you know the contents of this letter, my father?" he asked.
"No, my son. Why should I?"
"Why, indeed?"
And Sarrion passed out, while Father Muro held the door open rather
obsequiously.