THE STORMY PETREL
As Juanita quitted the room she heard Sarrion ask Evasio Mon if he had
lunched. And Mon admitted that he had as yet omitted that meal. Juanita
shrugged her shoulders. It is only in later life that we come to realise
the importance of meals. If Mon was hungry he should have said so. She
gave no further thought to him. She hated him. She was glad to think that
he should have suffered, even if his pain was only hunger. What was
hunger, she asked herself, compared with a broken heart? One was a
passing pang that could be alleviated, could be confessed to the first
comer, while a broken heart must be hidden at any cost from all the
world.
She met Cousin Peligros coming towards the drawing-room in her best black
silk dress, and in what might have been called a fluster of excitement at
the thought of a visitor, if such a word had been applicable to her
placid life of self-deception. Juanita made some small jest and laughed
rather eagerly at it as she passed the pattern lady on the stairs.
She was very calm and collected; being a determined person, as many
seemingly gay and light-hearted people are. She was going to leave Torre
Garda and Marcos, who had married her for her money. It is characteristic
of determined people that they are restricted in their foresight. They
look in front with eyes so steady and concentrated that they perceive no
side issues, but only the one path that they intend to tread. Juanita was
going back to Pampeluna, to Sor Teresa at the convent school in the Calle
de la Dormitaleria. She recked nothing of the Carlists, of the disturbed
country through which she had to pass.
She had never lacked money, and had sufficient now for her needs. The
village of Torre Garda could assuredly provide a carriage for the
journey; or, at the worst, a cart. Anything would be better than
remaining in this house--even the hated school in the Calle de la
Dormitaleria. She had always known that Sor Teresa was her friend, though
the Sister Superior's manner of indicating friendship had not been
invariably comprehensible.
Juanita took a cloak and what money she could find. She was not a very
tidy person, and the money had to be collected from odd trinket-boxes and
discarded purses. Marcos was still talking politics with his friend from
the mountains when she passed beneath his window. Sarrion and Evasio Mon
had gone to the dining-room, where, it was to be presumed, Cousin
Peligros had followed them. She professed a great admiration for Evasio
Mon, who was on familiar terms with people of the highest distinction. An
hour's start would be sufficient. In that time she could be half-way to
Pampeluna. Secrecy was of course out of the question.
The drawing-room window was open. Juanita paused on the threshold for a
moment. Then she went into the room and scribbled a hurried note--not
innocent of blots--which she addressed to Marcos. She left it on the
writing-table and carrying her cloak over her arm she hurried down a
zigzag path concealed in a thicket of scrub-oak to the village of Torre
Garda.
Before reaching the village she overtook a traveling-carriage going at a
walking pace down the hill. The carriage, which was old-fashioned in
build, and set high upon its narrow wheels, was empty.
"Where are you going?" asked Juanita, of the man who took off his hat to
her, almost as if he had expected her.
"I am returning to Pampeluna, empty, Excellency," he answered. "I have
brought the baggage of Señor Mon, who is traveling over the mountains on
horseback. I am hoping to get a fare from Torre Garda back to Pampeluna,
if I have the good fortune."
The coincidence was rather startling. Juanita had always been considered
a lucky girl, however; one for whom the smaller chances of daily
existence were invariably kind. She accepted this as another instance of
the indulgence of fate in small things. She was not particularly glad or
surprised. A dull indifference had come over her. The small things of
daily life had never engrossed her mind. She was quite indifferent to
them now. It was her intention to get to Pampeluna, through all
difficulties, and the incidents of the road occupied no place in her
thoughts. She was vaguely confident that no one could absolutely stand in
her way. Had not Evasio Mon said that the Pope would willingly annul her
marriage?
She was thinking these thoughts as she drove through the little mountain
village.
"What is that--it sounds like thunder or guns?" inquired Evasio Mon,
pausing in his late and simple luncheon in the dining-room.
"A clerical ear like yours should not know the sound of guns," replied
Sarrion with a curt laugh. "It is not that, however. It is a cart or a
carriage crossing the bridge below the village."
Mon nodded his head and continued to give his attention to his plate.
"Juanita looks well--and happy," he said, after a pause.
Sarrion looked at him and made no reply. He was borrowing from the absent
Marcos a trick of silence which he knew to be effective in a subtle war
of words.
"Do you not think so?"
"I am sure of it, Evasio."
Sarrion was wondering why he had come to Torre Garda--this stormy petrel
of clerical politics--whose coming never boded good. Mon was much too
wise to be audacious for audacity's sake. He was not a theatrical man,
but one who had worked consistently and steadily for a cause all through
his life. He was too much in earnest to consider effect or heed danger.
"I am not on the winning side, but I am sure that I am on the right one,"
he had once said in public. And the speech went the round of Spain.
After he had finished luncheon he spoke of taking his leave, and asked if
he might be allowed to congratulate Marcos on his escape.
"It should be a warning to him," he went on, "not to ride at night. To do
so is to court mishap in these narrow mountain roads."
"Yes," said Sarrion, slowly.
"Will his nurse allow me to see him?" asked the visitor.
"His nurse is Juanita. I will go and ask her," replied Sarrion, looking
round him quite openly to make sure that there were no letters lying
about on the tables of the terrace that Mon might be tempted to read in
his absence.
He hurried to Marcos' room. Marcos was out of bed. He was dressing, with
the help of his servant and the visitor from the mountains. With a quick
gesture, Marcos indicated the open window, through which the sound of any
exclamation might easily reach the ear of Evasio Mon.
"Juanita has gone," he said, in French. "Read that note. It is his doing,
of course."
"I know now," wrote Juanita, "why you were afraid of my growing up. But I
am grown up--and I have found out why you married me."
"I knew it would come sooner or later," said Marcos, who winced as he
drew his sleeve over his injured arm. He was very quiet and collected, as
people usually are in face of a long anticipated danger which when it
comes at last brings with it a dull sense of relief.
Sarrion made no reply. Perhaps he, too, had anticipated this moment. A
girl is a closed book. Neither knew what might be written in the hidden
pages of Juanita's heart.
A crisis usually serves to accentuate the weakness or strength of a man's
character. Marcos was intensely practical at this moment--more practical
than ever. He had only one thought--the thought that filled his
life--which was Juanita's welfare. If he could not make her happy he
could, at all events, shield her from harm. He could stand between her
and the world.
"She can only have gone down the valley," he said, continuing to speak in
French, which was a second mother tongue to him. "She must have gone to
Sor Teresa. He has induced her to go by some trick. He would not dare to
send her anywhere else."
"I heard a carriage cross the bridge," replied Sarrion. "He heard it
also, and asked what it was. The next moment he spoke of Juanita. The
sound must have put the thought of Juanita into his mind."
"Which means that he provided the carriage. He must have had it waiting
in the village. Whatever he may undertake is always perfectly organised;
we know that. How long ago was that?"
"An hour ago and more."
Marcos nodded and glanced at the clock.
"He will no doubt have made arrangements for her to get safely through to
Pampeluna."
"Then where are you going?" asked Sarrion, perceiving that Marcos was
slipping into his pocket the arm without which he never traveled in the
mountains.
"After her," was the reply.
"To bring her back?"
"No."
Marcos paused for a moment, looking from the window across the valley to
the pine-clad heights with thoughtful eyes. He held odd views--now deemed
chivalrous and old-fashioned--on the question of a woman's liberty to
seek her own happiness in her own way. Such views are unnecessary to-day
when woman is, so to speak, up and fighting. They belong to the days of
our grandmothers, who had less knowledge and much more wisdom; for they
knew that it is always more profitable to receive a gift than demand a
right. The measure will be fuller.
"No. Not unless it is her own wish," he said.
Sarrion made no answer. In human difficulties there is usually nothing to
be said. There is nearly always one clear course to steer and the
deviations are only found by too much talk and too much licence given to
crooked minds. If happiness is not to be found in the straight way
nothing is gained by turning into by-paths to seek it. A few find it and
a great number are not unhappy who have seen it down a side-path and have
yet held their course in the straight way.
"Will you keep him in the library--make the excuse that the sun is too
hot on the verandah--until I am gone?" said Marcos. "I will follow and,
at all events, see that she arrives safely at Pampeluna."
Sarrion gave a curt laugh.
"We may be able," he said, "to turn to good account Evasio's conviction
that you are ill in bed, when in reality you are in the saddle."
"He will soon find out."
"Of course--but in the meantime..."
"Yes," said Marcos with a slow smile ... "in the meantime." He left the
room as he spoke, but turned on the threshold to look back over his
shoulder. His eyes were alight with anger and the smile had lapsed into a
grin.
Sarrion went down to the verandah to entertain the unsought guest.
"They have given us coffee," he said, "in the library. It is too hot in
the sun, although we are still in March! Will you come?"
"And what has Juanita decreed?" asked Mon, when they were seated and
Sarrion had lighted his cigarette.
"The verdict has gone against you," replied Sarrion. "Juanita has decreed
most emphatically that you are not to be allowed to see Marcos."
Mon laughed and spread out his hands with a characteristic gesture of
bland acceptance of the inevitable. The man, it seemed, was a
philosopher; a person, that is to say, who will play to the end a game
which he knows he cannot win.
"Aha!" he laughed. "So we arrive at the point where a woman holds the
casting vote. It is the point to which all men travel. They have always
held the casting vote--ces dames--and we can only bow to the inevitable.
And Juanita is grown up. One sees it. She is beginning to record her
vote."
"Yes," answered Sarrion with a narrow smile. "She is beginning to record
her vote."
With a Spanish formality of manner, Sarrion placed his horse at the
disposition of Evasio Mon, should the traveller feel disposed to pass the
night at Torre Garda. But Mon declined.
"I am a bird of passage," he explained. "I am due in Pampeluna again
to-night. I shall enjoy the ride down the valley now that your
hospitality has so well equipped me for the journey----"
He broke off and looked towards the open window, listening.
Sarrion had also been listening. He had heard the thud of Marcos' horse
as it passed across the wooden bridge below the village.
"Guns again?" he suggested, with a short laugh.
"I certainly heard something," Mon answered. And rising briskly from his
chair, he went to the window. Sarrion followed him, and they stood side
by side looking out over the valley. At that moment that which was more
of a vibration than a sound came to their ears across the mountains--deep
and foreboding.
"I thought I was right," said Mon, in little more than a whisper. "The
Carlists are abroad, my friend, and I, who am a man of peace must get
within the city walls."
With an easy laugh he said good-bye. In a few minutes he was in the
saddle riding leisurely down the valley of the Wolf after Juanita--with
Marcos de Sarrion in between them on the road.