IN THE CLOUDS
Marcos tied his horse to a tree and led the way towards the cottage. It
seemed to be innocent of bars and bolts. The ford, known to so few, and
the evil name of the Wolf, served instead. The door opened at a push, and
Marcos went in. A wood-fire smouldered on an open hearth, while the acrid
smoke half-filled the room, blackened by the fumes of peat and charcoal.
Marcos stood on the threshold and called the owner by name. There was a
shuffling sound in an inner room and the scraping of a match. A minute
later a door was opened and an old woman stood in the aperture, fully
dressed and carrying a lamp above her head.
"Ah!" she said. "It is you. I thought it was the voice of a friend. And
you have your pretty wife there. What are you doing abroad at this hour
... the Carlists?"
"Yes," answered Marcos, rather quickly, "the Carlists. We cannot pass by
the road, so have sent the carriage back and are going across the
mountains."
The woman held up her hands and shook them from side to side in a gesture
of horror.
"Ah! but there!" she cried, "I know what you are. There is no turning
your back on your road. If you say you will go--you will go though it
rain rocks. But this child--ah, dear, dear! You do not know what you have
married--with your bright eyes. Sit down, my child. I will get you what I
can. Some coffee. I am alone in the house. All my men have gone to the
high valley, now that the snow is gone, to collect wood and to see what
the winter has done for our hut up in the mountain."
Marcos thanked her, and explained that they wanted nothing but a roof
under which to leave his horse.
"We are going up to the higher valley to-night," he said, "where we shall
find your husband and sons. And at daylight we must hurry on to Torre
Garda. But I want to borrow a dress and handkerchief belonging to one of
your daughters. See, the Señora cannot walk in that one, which is too
fine and too long."
"Oh, but my daughters ..." exclaimed the old woman, with deprecating
hands.
"They are very pretty girls," answered Marcos, with a laugh. "All the
valley knows that."
"They are not bad," admitted the mother, "but it is a flower compared to
a cabbage. Still, we can hide the flower in the cabbage leaves if you
like."
And she laughed heartily at her own conceit.
"Then see to it while I put my horse away," said Marcos. He quitted the
hut and overheard the woman pointing out to Juanita that she had lost her
mantilla coming through the trees in the dark. While he attended to his
horse he could hear their laughter and gay conversation over the change
of clothes; for Juanita understood these people as well as he did, and
had grown through childhood to the age of thought in their midst. The
peasant was still pressing a simple hospitality upon Juanita when Marcos
returned to the cottage and found her ready for the journey.
"I was telling the Señora," explained the woman volubly, "that she must
not so much as look inside the cottage in the mountains. I have not been
there for six months and the men--you know what they are. They are no
better than dogs I tell them. There is plenty of clean hay and dry
bracken in the sheds up there and you can well make a soft bed for her to
get some sleep for a few hours. And here I have unfolded a new blanket
for the lady. See, it is white as I bought it. She can use it. It has
never been worn--by us others," she added with perfect simplicity.
Marcos took the blanket while Juanita explained that having slept soundly
every night of her life without exception, she could well now accommodate
herself with a rest of two hours in the hay. The woman pressed upon them
some of her small store of coffee and some new bread.
"He can well prepare your breakfast for you," she said, confidentially to
Juanita. "He is like one of us. All the valley will tell you that. A
great gentleman who can yet cook his own breakfast--as the good God meant
them to be."
They set forth at once in the yellow light of the waning moon, Marcos
leading the way up a pathway hardly discernible amid the rocks and
undergrowth. Once or twice he turned to help Juanita over a hard or a
dangerous place. But they did not talk, as conversation was not only
difficult but inexpedient. They had climbed for two hours, slowly and
steadily, when the barking of a dog on the mountainside above them
notified them that they were nearing their destination.
"Who is it?" asked a voice presently.
"Marcos de Sarrion," replied Marcos. "Strike no lights."
"We have no candles up here," answered the man with a laugh. He only
spoke Basque and it was in this language that Marcos gave a brief
explanation. Juanita sat on a rock. She was tired out. There were three
men--short, thick-set and silent, a father and two sons. They stood in
front of Marcos and spoke in monosyllables after the manner of old
friends. Under his directions they brought a heap of dried bracken and
hay. In a shed, little more than a roof and four uprights, they made a
rough couch for Juanita which they hedged round with heaps of bracken to
protect her from the wind.
"You will see the stars," said the old man shaking out the blanket which
Marcos had carried up from the cottage at the ford. "It is good to see
the stars when you awake in the night. One remembers that the saints are
watching."
In a few minutes Juanita was sleeping, like a child, curled up beneath
her blanket, and heard through her dreams the low voices of Marcos and
the peasants talking hurriedly in the half-ruined cottage. For Marcos and
these three were the only men who knew the way over the mountains to
Torre Garda.
The dawn was just breaking when Marcos awoke Juanita.
"Oh," she said plaintively. "I have only been asleep ten minutes."
"You have slept three hours," replied Marcos in that hushed voice in
which it seems natural to speak before the dawn. "I am making
coffee--come when you are ready."
Juanita found a pail of water and a piece of last year's yellow soap
which had been carefully scraped clean with a knife. A clean towel had
also been provided. Juanita noted the manly simplicity of these
attentions with a little tender and wise smile.
"I know what it is that makes men gipsies," she said, when she joined
Marcos who was attending to a fire of sticks on the ground at the cottage
door. "I shall always have a kindly feeling for them now. They get
something straight from heaven which is never known to people who sleep
in stuffy houses and get up to wash in warm water."
She gave a little shiver at the recollection of her ablutions, and
laughed a clear, low laugh, as fresh as the morning itself.
"Where are the men?" she asked.
"One has gone to Pampeluna, one has taken a note to the officer
commanding the reinforcements sent for by Zeneta. The third has gone down
to fetch his mother up here to bake bread all day. There will be a little
army here to-night."
Juanita stood watching Marcos who seemed entirely absorbed in blowing up
the fire with a pair of dilapidated bellows.
"I suppose," she said lightly, "that it was of these things that you were
thinking when you were so silent as we climbed up here last night."
"I suppose so," answered Marcos.
Juanita looked at him with a little frown as if she did not quite believe
him. The day had now come and a pink light suffused the topmost peaks. A
faint warmth spread itself like a caress across the valley and turned the
cold air into a pearly mist.
"Of what are you thinking?" asked Marcos suddenly; for Juanita had stood
motionless, watching him.
"I was thinking what a comfort it is that you are not an indoor man," she
replied with a careless laugh.
The peasants had brought their cows to the high pastures. So there was
plenty of milk in the cottage which was little more than a dairy; for it
had no furniture beyond a few straw mattresses thrown on the floor in one
corner. Marcos served breakfast.
"Pedro particularly told me to see that you had the cup which has a
handle," he said, pouring the coffee from a battered coffee-pot. During
their simple breakfast they were silent. There was a subtle constraint.
Juanita who had a quick and direct mind, decided that the moment had come
for that explanation for which Marcos did not ask. An explanation does
not improve by keeping. They were alone here--alone in the world it
seemed--for the cows had strayed away. The dogs had gone to the valley
with their masters. She and Marcos had always known each other. She knew
his every thought; she was not afraid of him; she never had been. Why
should she be now?
"Marcos," she said.
"Yes."
"I want you to give me the letter I wrote to you at Torre Garda."
He felt in his pocket and handed her the first paper he found without
particularly looking at it. Juanita unfolded it. It was the note, all
crumpled, which she had thrust through the wall of the convent school at
Saragossa. She had forgotten it, but Marcos had kept it all this time.
"That is the wrong one," she said gravely, and handed it back to Marcos,
who took it with a little jerk of the head as of annoyance at his own
stupidity. He was usually very accurate in details. He gave her in
exchange the right paper, which had been torn in two. The other half is
in the military despatch office in Madrid to-day. Juanita had arranged in
her own mind what to say. She was quite mistress of the situation, and
was ready to move serenely and surely in her own sphere, taking the lead
in such subtle matters with the capability and mastery which
characterised Marcos' lead in affairs of action. But Marcos' mistake
seemed to have put out her prearranged scheme.
She slowly tore the letter into pieces and threw it on the fire.
"Do you know why I came back?" she asked, which question can hardly have
formed part of the plan of action.
"No."
"Because you never pretended that you cared. If you had pretended that
you cared for me, I should never have forgiven you."
Marcos did not answer. He looked up slowly, expecting perhaps to find her
looking elsewhere. But her eyes met his and she shrank back with an
involuntary movement that seemed to be of fear. Her face flushed all over
and then the colour faded from it, leaving her white and motionless as
she sat staring into the flickering wood-fire.
Presently she rose and walked to the edge of the plateau upon which the
hut was built. She stood there looking across to the mountains.
Marcos busied himself with the simple possessions of his host, setting
them in order where he had found them and treading out the smouldering
embers of the fire. Juanita turned and watched him over her shoulder with
a mystic persistency. Beneath her lashes lurked a smile--triumphant and
tender.