AT THE INN OF THE TWO TREES
At dawn the next morning, Marcos and Sarrion rode out of the city towards
Alagón by the great high road many inches deep in dust which has always
been the main artery of the capital of Aragon.
The pace was leisurely; for the carriage they were going to meet had been
timed to leave Alagón fifteen miles away at four o'clock. There was but
one road. They could scarcely miss it.
It was seven o'clock when they halted at a roadside inn. Sarrion quitted
the saddle and went indoors to order coffee while Marcos sat on his tall
black horse scanning the road in front of him. The valley of the Ebro is
flat here, with bare, brown hills rising on either side like a gigantic
mud-fence. Strings of carts were making their way towards Saragossa. Far
away, Marcos could perceive a recurrent break in the dusty line. A cart
or carriage traveling at a greater than the ordinary market pace was
making its laborious way past the heavier traffic. It came at length
within clearer sight; a carriage all white with dust and a pair of
skinny, Aragonese horses such as may be hired on the road.
The driver seemed to recognise Marcos, for he smiled and raised his hand
to his hat as he drew up at the inn, a recognised halting-place before
the last stage of the journey.
Marcos caught sight of a white cap inside the carriage. He leant down on
his horse's neck and perceived Sor Teresa, who had not seen him looking
out of the carriage window towards the inn. He rode round to the other
door and dropped out of the saddle. Then he turned the handle and opened
the door. But Sor Teresa had no intention of descending. She leant
forward to say as much and recognised her nephew.
"You!" she exclaimed. And her pale face flushed suddenly. She had been a
nun for many years and was no doubt a conscientious one, but she had
never yet learnt to remove all her love from earth to fix it on heaven.
"Yes."
"How did you know that I should be here?"
"I guessed it," answered Marcos, who was always practical. "You will like
some coffee. It is ordered. Come in and warm yourself while the horses
rest."
He led the way towards the inn.
"What did you say?" he asked, turning on the threshold; for he had heard
her mutter something.
"I said, 'Thank God'!"
"What for?"
"For your brains, my dear," she answered. "And your strong heart."
Sarrion was making up the fire when they entered the room--lithe and
young in his riding costume--and he turned, smiling, to meet her. She
kissed him gravely. There was always something unexplained between these
two, something to be said which made them both silent.
"There is the coffee," said Marcos, "on the table. We have no time to
spare."
"Marcos means," explained Sarrion significantly, "that we have no time to
waste."
"I think he is right," said Sor Teresa.
"Then if that is the case, let us at least speak plainly," said Sarrion,
"with a due regard," he allowed, with a shrug of the shoulder, "to your
vows and your position, and all that. We must not embroil you with your
confessor; nor Juanita with hers."
"You need not think of that so far as Juanita is concerned," said Sor
Teresa. "It is I who have chosen her confessor."
"Where is she?" asked Marcos.
"She is here, in Saragossa!"
"Why?" asked the man of few words.
"I don't know."
"Where is she in Saragossa?"
"I don't know. I have not seen her for a fortnight. I only learnt by
accident yesterday afternoon that she had been brought to Saragossa with
some other girls who have been postulants for six months and are about to
become novices."
"But Juanita is not a postulant," said Sarrion, with a laugh.
"She may have been told to consider herself one."
"But no one has a right to do that," said Sarrion pleasantly.
"No."
"And even if she were a novice she could draw back."
"There are some Orders," replied Sor Teresa, slowly stirring her coffee,
"which make it a matter of pride never to lose a novice."
"Excuse my pertinacity," said Sarrion. "I know that you prefer
generalities to anything of a personal nature, but does Juanita wish to
go into religion?"
"As much ..." She paused.
"Or as little," suggested Marcos, who was looking out of the window.
"As many who have entered that life." Sor Teresa completed the sentence
without noticing Marcos' interruption.
"And these periods of probation," said Sarrion, reverting to those
generalities which form the language of the cloister. "May they be
dispensed with?"
"Anything can be dispensed with--by a dispensation," was the reply.
Sarrion laughed, and with an easy tact changed the subject which could
scarcely be a pleasant one between a professed nun and two men known all
over Spain as leaders in that party which was erroneously called
Anti-Clerical, because it held that the Church should not have the
dominant voice in politics.
"Have you seen our friend, Evasio Mon, lately?" he asked.
"Yes--he is on the road behind me."
"Behind you? I understood that he left Pampeluna yesterday for
Saragossa," said Sarrion.
"Yes--but I heard at Alagón that he was delayed on the road at the
Castejon side of Alagón--an accident to his carriage--a broken wheel."
"Ah!" said Sarrion sympathetically. He glanced at Marcos who was looking
out of the window with a thoughtful smile.
"You yourself have had a hurried journey from Pampeluna," said Sarrion to
his sister. "I hear the railway line is broken by the Carlists."
"The damage is being repaired," replied Sor Teresa. "My journey was not a
pleasant one, but that is of no importance since I have arrived."
"Why did you come?" asked Marcos, bluntly. He was a plain-dealer in
thought and word. If Sor Teresa should embroil herself with her
confessor, as Sarrion had gracefully put it, by answering his questions,
that was her affair.
"I came to prevent, if I could, a great mistake."
"You mean that Juanita is quite unfitted for the life into which, for the
sake of his money, she is being forced or tricked."
"Force has failed," replied Sor Teresa. "Juanita has spirit. She laughed
in the face of force and refused absolutely."
"And?" muttered Sarrion.
"One may presume that subtler means were used," answered the nun.
"You mean trickery," suggested Marcos. "You mean that her own words were
twisted into another meaning; that she was committed or convicted out of
her own lips; that she was brought to Saragossa by trickery, and that by
trickery she will be dragged unwittingly into religion--you need not
shake your head. I am saying nothing against the Church. I am a good
Catholic. It is a question of politics. And in politics you must fight
with the weapon that the adversary selects. We are only politicians ...
my dear aunt."
"Is that all?" said Sor Teresa, looking at him with her deep eyes which
had seen the world before they saw heaven. Things seen leave their trace
behind the eyes.
Marcos made no answer, but turned away and looked out of the window
again.
"It is a question of mutual accommodation," put in Sarrion in his lighter
voice. "Sometimes the Church makes use of politics. And at another time
it is politics making use of the Church. And each sullies the other on
each occasion. We shall not let Juanita go into religion. The Church may
want her and may think that it is for her happiness, but we also have our
opinion on that point; we also ..."
He broke off with a laugh and threw out his hands in a gesture of
deprecation; for Sor Teresa had placed her two hands over that part of
her cap which concealed her ears.
"I can hear nothing," she said. "I can hear nothing."
She removed her hands and sat sipping her coffee in silence. Marcos was
standing near the window. He could see the white road stretched out
across the plain for miles.
"What did you intend to do on your arrival in Saragossa if you had not
met us?" he asked.
"I should have gone to the Casa Sarrion to warn your father or yourself
that Juanita had been taken from my control and that I did not know where
she was."
"And then?" inquired Marcos.
"And then I should have gone to Torrero," she answered with a smile at
his persistence; "where I intend to go now. Then I shall learn at what
hour and in which chapel the ceremony is to take place to-day."
"The ceremony in which Juanita has been ordered to take part as a
spectator only?"
Sor Toresa nodded her head.
"It cannot well take place without you?"
"No," she answered. "Neither can it take place without Evasio Mon. One of
the novices is his niece, and, where possible, the near relations are
necessarily present."
"Yes--I know," said Marcos. He had apparently studied the subject
somewhat carefully. "And Evasio Mon is delayed on the road, which gives
us a little more time to mature our plans."
Sor Teresa said nothing, but glanced towards Marcos who was watching the
road.
"You need not be anxious, Dolores," said Sarrion, cheerfully. "Between
politicians these matters settle themselves quietly enough in Spain."
"I ceased to be anxious," replied Sor Teresa, "from the moment that I saw
Marcos in the inn yard."
It was Marcos who spoke next, after a short silence.
"Your horses are ready, if you are rested," he said. "We shall return to
Saragossa by a shorter route."
"And I again assure you," added Sor Teresa's brother, "that there is no
need for anxiety. We shall arrange this matter quite quietly with Evasio
Mon. We shall take Juanita away from your school to-day. Our cousin
Peligros is already at the Casa Sarrion waiting her arrival. Marcos has
arranged these matters."
He made a gesture of the hand, presumably symbolic of Marcos' plans, for
it was short and sharp.
"There will be nothing for you to do," said Marcos from the window.
"Waste no time. I see a carriage some miles away."
So Sor Teresa went on her journey. Her dealings with men had been
confined to members of that sex who went about their purpose in an
indirect and roundabout way, speaking in generalities, attentive to
insignificant detail, possessing that smaller sense of proportion which
is a feminine failing and which must always make a tangled jumble of
those public affairs in which women and priests may play a part. She had
come into actual touch in this little room of an obscure inn with a force
which seemed to walk calmly on its way over the petty tyranny that ruled
her daily life, which seemed to fear no man, neither God as represented
by man, but shaped for itself a Deity, large-minded and manly; Who
considered the broad inner purpose rather than petty detail of outward
observance.
The Sarrions returned to their gloomy house on the Paseo del Ebro and
there awaited the information which Sor Teresa alone could give them.
They had not waited long before the driver of her carriage, who had
seemed to recognise Marcos on the road from Alagón, brought a note:
"It is at number five, Calle de la Merced, but they will await, E. M."
"And the other carriage that is on the road?" Marcos asked the man. "The
carriage which brings the caballero--has it arrived in Saragossa?"
"Not yet," answered the driver. "I have heard from one who passed them on
the road that they had a second mishap just after leaving the inn of The
Two Trees, where their Excellencies took coffee--a little mishap this
one, which will only delay them an hour or less. He has no luck, that
caballero."
The man looked quite gravely at Marcos, who returned the glance as
solemnly. For they were as brothers, these two, sons of that same mother,
Nature, with whom they loved to deal, fighting her strong winds, her
heat, her cold, her dust and rivers, reading her thousand and one secrets
of the clouds, of night and dawn, which townsmen never know and never
even suspect. They had a silent contempt for the small subtleties of a
man's mind, and were half ashamed of the business on which they were now
engaged.
As the man withdrew in obedience to Marcos' salutation, "Go with God,"
the clock struck twelve.
"Come," said Marcos to his father, "we must go to number five, Calle de
la Merced. Do you know the house?"
"Yes; it is one of the many in Saragossa that stand empty, or are
supposed to stand empty. It is an old religious house which was sacked in
the disturbances of Christina's reign."
He walked to the window as he spoke and looked out.
The house had been thrown open for the first time for many years, and
they now occupied one of the larger rooms looking across the garden to
the Ebro.
"Ah! you have ordered the carriage," he said, seeing the brougham
standing at the door, and the rusty gates thrown open, giving egress to
the Paseo del Ebro.
"Yes," answered Marcos in an odd and restrained voice. "To bring Juanita
back."