AT THE FORD
"They will allow two nuns to pass anywhere," said Sor Teresa with her
chilling smile as she led the way to her own cell in the corridor
overhead. She provided Juanita with that dress which is a passport
through any quarter of a town, across any frontier; to any battlefield.
So Juanita took the veil at last--in order to return to Marcos.
Sor Teresa's words proved true enough at the city gates where the
sentinels recognised her and allowed her carriage to pass across the
drawbridge by a careless nod of acquiescence to the driver.
It was a clear dark night without a moon. The prevailing wind which
hurries down from the Pyrenees to the warmer plains of Spain stirred the
budding leaves of the trees that border the road below the town walls.
"I suppose," said Sor Teresa suddenly, "that Evasio Mon was at Torre
Garda to-day."
"Yes."
"And you left him there when you came away."
"Yes."
"We shall meet him on the road," said Sor Teresa with a note of anxiety
in her voice. Presently she stood up in the carriage which was an open
one on high wheels and spoke to the driver in a low voice into his ear.
He was a stout and respectable man with a good ecclesiastical clientèle
in the pious capital of Navarre. He had a confidential manner.
The distant firing had ceased now and a great stillness reigned over the
bare land. There are no trees here to harbour birds or to rustle in the
wind. The man, nursing his horses for the long journey, drove at an easy
pace. Juanita, usually voluble enough, seemed to have nothing to say to
Sor Teresa. The driver could possibly overhear the conversation of his
passengers. For this, or for another reason, Sor Teresa was silent.
As they approached the hills, they found themselves in a more broken
country. They climbed and descended with a rather irritating regularity.
The spurs of the Pyrenees keep their form right down to the plains and
the road to Torre Garda passes over them. Juanita leant sideways out of
the carnage and stared upwards into the pine trees.
"Do you see anything?" asked Sor Teresa.
"No--I can see nothing."
"There is a chapel up there, on the slope."
"Our Lady of the Shadows," answered Juanita and lapsed into silence
again. She knew now why the name had struck her with such foreboding,
when she had learnt it from the lips of the laughing young captain of
infantry.
It told of calamity--the greatest that can happen to a woman--to be
married without love.
The driver turned in his seat and tried to overhear. He seemed uneasy and
looked about him with quick turns of the head. At last, when his horses
were mounting a hill, he turned round.
"Did these sainted ladies hear anything?" he asked.
"No," answered Sor Teresa. "Why do you ask?"
"There has been a man on horseback on the road behind us," he answered
with assumed carelessness, "all the way from Pampeluna. He has now taken
a short cut and is in front on the road above us; I can hear him; that is
all."
And he gave a little cry to his horses; the signal for them to trot. They
were approaching the mouth of the Valley of the Wolf, and could hear the
sound of its wild waters in the darkness below them. The valley opens out
like a fan with either slope rising at an easy angle to the pine woods.
The road is a cornice cut on the western bank upon which side it runs for
ten miles until the bridge below the village of Torre Garda leads it
across the river to the sunny slope where the village crouches below the
ancient castle from which the name is taken.
The horses were going at a walking pace now, and the driver to show,
perhaps, his nonchalance and fearlessness was humming a song beneath his
breath, when suddenly the hillside burst into flame and a deafening roar
of musketry stunned both horses and driver. Juanita happened to be
looking up at the hillside and she saw the fire run along like a snake of
flame in the grass. In a moment the carriage had swung round and the
horses were going at a gallop down the hill again. The driver stood up.
He had a rein in either hand and he hauled the horses round each
successive corner with consummate skill. All the while he used language
which would have huddled Cousin Peligros shrieking in the bottom of the
carriage.
Juanita and Sor Teresa stood up and looked back. By the light of the
firing they saw a man lying low on his horse's neck galloping headlong
through the zone of death after them.
"Did you hear the bullets?" said Juanita breathlessly. "They were like
the wind through the telegraph-wires. Oh, I should like to be a man; I
should like to be a soldier!"
And she gave a low laugh of thrilling excitement.
The driver was now pulling up his horses. He too laughed aloud.
"It is the troops," he cried. "They thought we were the Carlists. But,
who is this, Señoras? It is that man again."
He leant back and hastily twisted one of the carriage-lamps round in its
socket so as to show a light behind him towards the newcomer.
As the rider pulled up he came within the rays of the lamp which was a
powerful one; and at the sight of him Juanita gave a sharp cry which
neither she nor any that heard it forgot to the end of their lives.
"It is Marcos," she cried, clutching Sor Teresa's arm. "And he came
through that--he came through that!"
"No one hurt?" asked Marcos' deep voice.
"No one hurt, Señor," answered the driver who had recognised him.
"And the horses?"
"The horses are safe. A malediction upon them; they nearly had us over
the cliff. Those are the troops. They took us for Carlists."
"No," said Marcos. "They are the Carlists. The troops have been driven
farther up the valley where they are entrenched. They have sent to
Pampeluna for help. This is a Carlist trap to catch the reinforcements as
they approach. They thought your carriage was a gun."
The driver scratched his head and made known his views as to the
ancestory of the Carlists.
"There is no getting into the valley to-night," said Marcos to Sor Teresa
and Juanita. "You must return to Pampeluna."
"And what will you do?" asked Juanita in a hard voice.
"I will go on to Torre Garda on foot," answered Marcos speaking in French
so that the driver should not hear and understand. "There is a way over
the mountains which is known to two or three only."
"Uncle Ramon is at Torre Garda?" asked Juanita in the same curt, quick
way.
"Yes."
"Then I will go with you," she said with her hand already on the door.
"It is sixteen miles," said Marcos, "over the high mountains. The last
part can only be done by daylight. I shall be in the mountains all
night."
Juanita had opened the door. She stood on the step looking up at him as
he sat on the tall black horse,
"If you will take me," she said in French, "I will come with you."
Sor Teresa was silent still. She had not spoken since Marcos had pulled
up his sweating horse in the lamplight. What a simple world this would be
if more of its women knew when to hold their tongues!
Marcos, fresh from a bed of sickness was not fit to undertake this
journey. He must already be tired out; for she knew that it was Marcos
who had followed their carriage from Pampeluna. She guessed that finding
no troops where he expected to find them he had ridden ahead to discover
the cause of it and had passed unheard through the Carlist ambush and
back again through the zone of fire. That Juanita could accomplish the
journey on foot to Torre Garda seemed doubtful. The country was unsafe;
the snows had hardly melted. It was madness for a wounded man and a girl
to attempt to reach Torre Garda through a pass held by the enemy. But Sor
Teresa said nothing.
Marcos sat motionless in the saddle. His face was above the radius of the
reversed carriage-lamp, while Juanita standing on the dusty road in her
nun's dress looking up at him, was close to the glaring light. It is to
be presumed that he was watching her descend from the carriage and then
turn to shut the door on Sor Teresa. By his silence, Marcos seemed to
consent to this arrangement.
He came forward into the light now. In his hand he held a paper which he
was unfolding. Juanita recognised the letter she had written to him in
the drawing-room at Torre Garda. He tore the blank sheet off and folding
the letter closely, replaced it in his pocket. Then he laid the blank
sheet on the dusty splash-board of the carriage and wrote a few words in
pencil.
"You must get back to Pampeluna," he said to the driver in that tone of
command which is the only survival of feudal days now left in Europe--and
even the modern Spaniards are losing it--"at any cost--you understand. If
you meet the reinforcements on the road give this note to the commanding
officer. Take no denial; give it into his own hand. If you meet no troops
go straight to the house of the commandant at Pampeluna and give the
letter to him. You will see that it is done," he said in a lower voice,
turning to Sor Teresa.
The man protested that nothing short of death would prevent his carrying
out the instructions.
"It will be worth your while," said Marcos. "It will be remembered
afterwards."
He paused deep in thought. There were a hundred things to be considered
at that moment; quickly and carefully. For he was going into the Valley
of the Wolf, cut off from all the world by two armies watching each other
with a deadly hatred.
The quiet voice of Sor Teresa broke the silence, softly taking its place
in his thoughts. It seemed that the Sarrion brain had the power--the
secret of so much success in this world--of thrusting forth a sure and
steady hand to grasp the heart of a question and tear it from the tangle
of side-issues among which the majority of men and women are condemned to
flounder.
"Where is Evasio Mon?" she asked.
Marcos answered with a low, contented laugh.
"He is trapped in the valley," he said in French. "I have seen to that."
The firing had ceased as suddenly as it had commenced, and a silence only
broken by the voice of the river, now hung over the valley.
"Are you ready?" Sor Teresa asked her driver.
"Yes, Excellency."
"Then go."
She may have nodded a farewell to Marcos and Juanita. But that they could
not see in the blackness of the night. She certainly gave them no spoken
salutation. The carriage moved away at a sharp trot, leaving Marcos and
Juanita alone.
"We can ride some distance and must ford the river higher up," said
Marcos at once. He did not seem to want any explanation. The excitement
of the moment seemed to have wiped out the events of the last few months
like writing off a slate. Juanita was young again, ready to throw herself
headlong into an adventure in the mountains with Marcos such as they had
had together many times during the holidays. But this was better than the
dangers of mere snow and ice. For Juanita had tasted that highest of
emotions, the excitement of battle. She had heard that which some men
having once heard cannot live without, the siren song of a bullet.
"Are we going nearer to the Carlists?" she asked hurriedly. There was
fighting blood in her veins, and the tones of her voice told clearly
enough that it was astir at this moment.
"Yes," answered Marcos. "We must pass underneath them; for the ford is
there. We must be quite noiseless. We must not even whisper."
He edged his horse towards one of the rough stones laid on the outer edge
of the road to mark its limit at night.
"I can only give you one hand," he said. "Can you get up from this
stone?"
"Behind you?" asked Juanita; "as we used to ride when I was--little?"
For Marcos had, like most Spaniards, grown from boyhood to manhood in the
saddle, and Juanita had no fear of horses. She clambered to the broad
back of the Moor and settled herself there, sitting pillion fashion and
holding herself in position with both hands round Marcos.
"If he trots, I fall off," she said, with an eager laugh.
They soon quitted the road and began to descend the steep slope towards
the river by a narrow path only made visible by the open space in the
high brushwood. It was the way down to a ford leading to a cottage by
courtesy called a farm, though the cultivated land was scarcely an acre
in extent, reclaimed from the river-bed.
The ground was soft and mossy and the roar of the river covered the tread
of the careful horse. In a few minutes they reached the water's edge, and
after a moment's hesitation the Moor stepped boldly in. On the other bank
Marcos whispered to Juanita to drop to the ground.
"The cottage is here," he said. "I shall leave the horse in their shed."
He descended from the saddle and they stood for a moment side by side.
"Let us wait a few moments, the moon is rising," said Marcos. "Perhaps
the Carlists have been here."
As he spoke the sky grew lighter. In a minute or two a waning moon looked
out over the sharp outline of hill and flooded the valley with a reddish
light.
"It is all right," he said; nothing is disturbed here. They are asleep in
the cottage; the noise of the river must have drowned the firing. They
are friends of mine; they will give us some food for to-morrow morning
and another dress for you. You cannot go in that."
"Oh!" laughed Juanita, "I have taken the veil. It is done now and cannot
be undone."
She raised her hands to the wings of her spreading cap as if to defend it
against all comers. And Marcos, turning, suddenly threw his uninjured arm
round her, imprisoning her struggling arms. He held her thus a prisoner
while with his injured hand he found the strings of the cap. In a moment
the starched linen fluttered out, fell into the river, and was carried
swirling away.
Juanita was still laughing, but Marcos did not answer to her gaiety. She
recollected at that instant having once threatened to dress as a nun in
order to alarm Marcos, and Sarrion's grave remark that it would of a
certainty frighten him.
They were silent for a moment. Then Juanita spoke with a sort of forced
lightness.
"You may have only one arm," she said, "but it is an astonishingly strong
one!"
And she looked at him surreptitiously beneath her lashes as she stood
with her hands on her hair.