COUSIN PELIGROS
The novitiate dress had been dispensed with, and Juanita wore her usual
school-dress of black, with a black mantilla. They therefore walked the
length of the Calle de la Merced without attracting undue attention.
Juanita's cheeks were flushed and her eyes bright with excitement. She
slipped her hand within Sarrion's arm and gave it a little squeeze of
affection.
"How kind of you to come," she said. "I knew I could trust you. I was
never afraid."
Sarrion smiled a little dryly and glanced towards Marcos, who had met and
overcome all the difficulties, and who now walked quietly by his side,
concealing the bloodstains on the handkerchief covering his lips.
Then Juanita let go Sarrion's left arm and ran round behind him to take
the other, while with her right hand she took Marcos' left arm.
"There," she cried, with a laugh. "Now I am safe from all the world--from
all the world! Is it not so?"
"Yes," answered Marcos, turning to look at her as she moved, her feet
hardly touching the ground, between them.
"Why do you look at me like that?" she asked.
"I think you have grown."
"I know I have," she answered gravely. And she stopped in the street to
stand her full height and to draw her slim bodice in at the waist. "I am
an inch taller than Milagros, but Milagros is getting most preposterously
fat. The girls tell her that she will soon be like Sor Dorothea who is so
huge that she has to be hauled up from her knees like a sack that has
been saying its prayers. That stupid Milagros cries when they say it."
"Is Milagros going to be a nun?" asked Sarrion, absent-mindedly. He was
thinking of something else and looked at Juanita with a speculative
glance. She was so gay and inconsequent.
"Heaven forbid!" was the reply. "She says she is going to marry a
soldier. I can't think why. She says she likes the drums. But I told her
she could buy a drum and hire a man to hit it. She is very rich, you
know. It is not worth marrying for that, is it?"
"No," answered Marcos, to whom the question had been addressed.
"She may get tired of drums, you know. Just as we get tired saying our
prayers at school. I am sure she ought to reflect before she marries a
soldier. I wouldn't if I were she. Oh! but I forgot...."
She paused and turning to Marcos she gripped his arm with a confidential
emphasis. "Do you know, Marcos, I keep on forgetting that we are married.
You don't mind, do you? I am not a bit sorry, you know. I am so glad,
because it gets me away from school. And I hate school. And there was
always the dread that they would make me a nun despite us all. You don't
know what it is to feel helpless and to have a dread; to wake up with it
at night and wish you were dead and all the bother was over."
"It is all over now, without being dead," Marcos assured her, with his
slow smile.
"Quite sure?"
"Quite sure," answered Marcos.
"And I shall never go back to school again. And they have no power over
me; neither Sor Teresa, nor Sor Dorothea, nor the dear mother. We always
call her the 'dear mother,' you know, because we have to; but we hate
her. But that is all over now, is it not?"
"Yes," answered Marcos.
"Then I am glad I married you," said Juanita, with conviction.
"And I need not be afraid of Señor Mon, with his gentle smile?" asked
Juanita, turning on Marcos with a sudden shrewd gravity.
"No."
She gave a great sigh of relief and shook back her mantilla. Then she
laughed and turned to Sarrion.
"He always says 'yes' or 'no'--and only that," she remarked
confidentially to him. "But somehow it seems enough."
They had reached the corner of the street now, and the carriage was
approaching them. It was one of the heavy carriages used only on state
occasions which had stood idle for many years in the stables of the
Palacio Sarrion. The horses were from Torre Garda and the men in their
quiet liveries greeted her with country frankness.
"It is one of the grand carriages," said Juanita.
"Yes."
"Why?" she asked.
"To take you home," replied Sarrion.
Juanita got into the carriage and sat down in silence. The man who closed
the door touched his hat, not to the Sarrions but to her; and she
returned the salutation with a friendly smile.
"Where are we going?" she asked after a pause.
"To the Casa Sarrion," was the reply.
"Is it open, after all these years?"
"Yes," answered Sarrion.
"But why?"
"For you," answered Sarrion.
Juanita turned and looked out of the window, with bright and thoughtful
eyes. She asked no more questions and they drove to the Palacio Sarrion
in silence.
There they found Cousin Peligros awaiting them.
Cousin Peligros was a Sarrion and seemed in some indefinite way to
consider that in so being and so existing she placed the world under an
obligation. That she considered the world bound, in return for the honour
she conferred upon it, to support her in comfort and deference was a
patent fact hardly worth putting into words.
"The old families," she was in the habit of saying with a sigh, "are
dying out."
At the same time she made a little gesture with outspread palms, and
folded her white hands complacently on her lap as if to indicate that
society was not left comfortless--that she was still there. From her
inferiors she looked for the utmost deference. Her white hands had never
done an hour's work. She was ignorant and idle; but she was a lady and a
Sarrion.
Cousin Peligros lived in a little apartment in Madrid, which she fondly
imagined to be the hub of the social universe.
"They all come," she said, "to consult the Senorita de Sarrion upon
points of etiquette."
And she patted the air condescendingly with her left hand. There are some
people who seem to be created by a far-seeing Providence as a solemn
warning.
"Cousin Peligros," said Juanita one day, after listening respectfully to
a lecture on the care of the hands, "lives in a little field of her own."
"Like a scarecrow," added Marcos, the taciturn.
And this was the lady who awaited them at the Palacio Sarrion. She had
been summoned from Madrid by Sarrion, who paid the expenses of the
journey; no small item, by the way. For Cousin Peligros, like many people
who live at the expense of others, sought to mitigate the bitterness of
the bread of charity by spreading it very thickly with other people's
butter.
She did not come down to the door to meet them when the carriage
clattered over the cobble-stones of the echoing patio.
Such a proceeding might have lowered her dignity in the eyes of the
servants, who, to do them justice, saw right through Cousin Peligros
into the vacuum that lay behind her. She sat in state in the great
drawing-room with her hands folded on her lap and placidly arranged her
proposed mode of greeting the newcomers. She had been informed that
Sarrion had found it necessary to take Juanita de Mogente away from the
convent school and to assume the cares of that guardianship which had
always been an understood obligation mutually binding between himself
and Francisco de Mogente.
Cousin Peligros was therefore keenly alive to the fact, that Juanita
required at this critical moment of her life a good and abiding example.
Hers also was the blessed knowledge that no one in all Spain was better
fitted to offer such an example than the Señorita Peligros de Sarrion.
She therefore sat in her best black silk dress in an attitude subtly
combining, with a kind tolerance for all who were so unfortunate as not
to be Sarrions, a complacent determination to do her duty.
It is to be regretted that she was for a time left sitting thus, for
Perro was in the hall, and his greeting of Juanita had to be acknowledged
with several violent hugs, which resulted in Juanita's mantilla getting
mixed up with Perro's collar. Then there were the pictures and the armour
to be inspected on the stairs. For Juanita had never seen the palace with
its shutters open.
"Are they all Sarrions?" she exclaimed. "Oh mi alma! What a fierce
company. That old gentleman with a spike on top of his hat is a crusader
I suppose. And there is a helmet hanging on the wall beneath the
portrait, with a great dent in it. But I expect he hit him back again.
Don't you think so, Uncle Ramon, if he was a Sarrion?"
"I dare say he did," answered the Count.
"I wish I was a Sarrion," said Juanita, looking up at the armour with a
light in her eyes.
"You are one," replied Sarrion, gravely.
She stopped and glanced back over her shoulder at him. Marcos was some
way behind, and took no part in the conversation.
"So I am," she said. "I forgot."
And with a little sigh, as of a realised responsibility, she continued
her way up the wide stairs. The sight of Cousin Peligros, upright on a
chair, dispelled Juanita's momentary gravity, however.
"Oh, Cousin Peligros," she cried, running to her and taking both her
hands. "Just think! I have left school. No more punishments--no more
grammar--no more arithmetic!"
Cousin Peligros had risen and endeavoured to maintain that dignity which
she felt to be so beneficial an example to the world. But Juanita
emphasised each item of her late education with a jerk which gradually
deranged Cousin Peligros' prim mantilla. Then she danced her round an
impalpable mulberry bush until the poor lady was breathless.
"No more Primes at six o'clock in the morning," concluded Juanita,
suddenly allowing Cousin Peligros to sit again. "Do you ever go to Primes
at six o'clock in the morning, Cousin Peligros?"
"No," was the grave answer. "Such things are not expected of ladies."
"How thoughtful of Heaven!" exclaimed Juanita, with a light laugh. "Then
I do not mind being grownup--and putting up my hair--if you will lend me
two hairpins."
She fell on Cousin Peligros' mantilla and extracted two hairpins from it
despite the resistance of the soft white hands. Then she twisted up the
heavy plait that hung to her waist, threw back her mantilla and stood
laughing before the old lady.
"There--I am grown-up! I am more grown-up than you, you know; for
I am..."
She broke off, and turning to Sarrion, asked,
"Does she know ... does she know the joke?"
"No," said Sarrion.
"We are married," she said, standing squarely in front of Cousin
Peligros.
"Married ..." echoed the disciple of etiquette, faintly. "Married--to
whom?"
"Marcos and I."
But Cousin Peligros only gasped and covered her face with her hands.
Marcos came into the room at this moment and scarcely looked at Cousin
Peligros. Those white hands played so large a part in her small daily
life that they were always in evidence, and it did not seem out of place
that they should cover her foolish face.
"I found all your clothes ready packed at the school," he said,
addressing Juanita. "Sor Teresa brought them with her from Pampeluna. You
will find them in your room."
"Oh ..." groaned Cousin Peligros.
"What is it?" inquired Marcos practically. "What is the matter with her?"
"She has just been told that we are married," explained Juanita, airily.
"And I think you shocked her by mentioning my clothes. You shouldn't do
it, Marcos."
And she went and stood by Cousin Peligros with her hand upon her shoulder
as if to protect her. She shook her head gravely at Marcos.
Cousin Peligros rose rigidly and walked towards the door.
"I will go," she said. "I will see that your room is in order. I have
never before been made an object of ridicule in a gentleman's house."
"But we may surely laugh and be happy in a gentleman's house, may we
not?" cried Juanita, running after her, and throwing one arm round her
rather unbending and capacious waist. "You are an old dear, and you must
not be so solemn about it. Marcos and I are only married for fun, you
know."
And the door closed behind them, shutting off Juanita's voluble
explanations.
"You see," said Sarrion, after a pause. "She is happy enough."
"Now," answered Marcos. "But she may find out some day that she is not."
Juanita came back before long and found Sarrion alone.
"Where is Marcos?" she asked.
"He is taking a siesta," answered Sarrion.
"Like a poor man."
"Yes, like a poor man. He was not in bed all last night. You had a
narrower escape of being made a nun than you suspect."
Juanita's face fell. She went to the window and stood there looking out.
"When are we going to Torre Garda?" she asked, after a long silence. "I
hate towns ... and people. I want to smell the pines ... and the
bracken."