LE GANT DE VELOURS
They accomplished the rest of the journey without accident. The old
spirit of adventure which had led them to these mountains while they were
yet children seemed to awaken again, and they were as comrades. But
Juanita was absent-minded. She was not climbing skilfully. At one place
far above trees or other vegetation she made a false step and sent a
great rock rolling down the slope.
"You must be careful," said Marcos, almost sharply. "You are not thinking
what you are doing."
And Juanita suffered the reproof with an unwonted meekness. She was more
careful while they passed over a dangerous slope where the snow had
softened in the morning sun, and came to the topmost valley--an oval
basin of rocks and snow with no visible outlet. Immediately below them,
at the foot of a slope, which looked quite feasible, lay huddled the body
of a man.
"It is a Carlist," explained Marcos. "We heard some time ago that they
had been trying to find another way over to Torre Garda. That valley is a
trap. That is not the way to Torre Garda at all; and that slope is solid
ice. See, his knife lies beside him. He tried to cut steps before he
died. This is our way."
And he led Juanita rather hastily away. At nine o'clock they passed the
last shoulder and stood above Torre Garda, and the valley of the Wolf
lying in the sunlight below them. The road down the valley lay like a
yellow ribbon stretched across the broad breast of Nature.
Half an hour later they reached the pine woods, and heard Perro barking
on the terrace. The dog soon came panting to meet them, and not far
behind him Sarrion, whose face betrayed no surprise at perceiving
Juanita.
"You would have been safer at Pampeluna," he said with a keen glance into
her face.
"I am quite safe enough here, thank you," she answered, meeting his eyes
with a steady smile.
He asked Marcos whether he had felt his wounded shoulder or suffered from
so much exertion. And Juanita answered more fully than Marcos, giving
details which she had certainly not learnt from himself. A man having
once been nursed in sickness by a woman parts with some portion of his
personal liberty which she never relinquishes.
"It is the result of good nursing," said Sarrion, slipping his hand
inside Juanita's arm and walking by her side.
"It is the result of his great strength," she answered, with a glance
towards Marcos, which he did not perceive, for he was looking straight in
front of him.
"Uncle Ramon," said Juanita, an hour later when they were sitting on the
terrace together. She turned towards him suddenly with her shrewd little
smile. "Uncle Ramon--do you ever play Pelota?"
"Every Basque plays Pelota," he replied.
Juanita nodded and lapsed into reflective silence. She seemed to be
arranging something in her mind. Towards Sarrion, as towards Marcos, she
assumed at times an attitude of protection, and almost of patronage, as
if she knew much that was hidden from them and had access to some chamber
of life of which the door was closed to all men.
"Does it ever strike you," she said at length, "that in a game of
Pelota--supposing the ball to be endowed with a ... well a certain lower
form of intelligence, the intelligence of a mere woman, for instance--it
would be rather natural for it to wonder what on earth the game was
about? It might even think that it had a certain right to know what was
happening to it."
"Yes," admitted Sarrion, who having a quick and eager mind, understood
that Juanita was preparing to speak plainly. And at such times women
always speak more plainly than men. He lighted a cigarette, threw away
the match with a little gesture which seemed to indicate that he was
ready for her--would meet her on her own ground.
"Why did Evasio Mon want me to go into religion?" she asked bluntly.
"My child--you have three million pesetas."
"And if I had gone into religion--and I nearly did--the Church would have
had them?"
"Pardon me," said Sarrion. "The Jesuits--not the Church. It is not the
same thing--though the world does not yet understand that. The Jesuits
would have had the money and they would have spent it in throwing Spain
into another civil war which would have been a worse war than we have
seen. The Church--our Church--has enemies. It has Bismarck, and the
English; but it has no worse enemy than the Jesuits. For they play their
own game."
"At Pelota! and you and Marcos?"
"We were on the other side," said Sarrion, with a shrug of the shoulders.
"And I have been the ball."
Sarrion glanced at her sideways. This was the moment that Marcos had
always anticipated. Sarrion wondered why he should have to meet it and
not Marcos. Juanita sat motionless with steady eyes fixed on the distant
mountains. He looked at her lips and saw there a faint smile not devoid
of pity--as if she knew something of which he was ignorant. He pulled
himself together; for he was a bold man who faced his fences with a
smile.
"Well," he said, "... since we have won."
"Have you won?"
Sarrion glanced at her again. Why did she not speak plainly, he was
wondering. In the subtler matters of life, women have a clearer
comprehension and a plainer speech than men. When they are
tongue-tied--the reason is a strong one.
"At all events Señor Mon does not know when he is beaten," said Juanita,
and the silence that followed was broken by the distant sound of firing.
They were fighting at the mouth of the valley.
"That is true," admitted Sarrion.
"They say he is trapped in the valley--as we are."
"So I believe."
"Will he come to Torre Garda?"
"As likely as not," answered Sarrion. "He has never lacked audacity."
"If he comes I should like to speak to him," said Juanita.
Sarrion wondered whether she intended to make Evasio Mon understand that
he was beaten. It was Mon himself who had said that the woman always
holds the casting vote.
"At all events," said Juanita, who seemed to have returned in her
thoughts to the question of winning or losing. "At all events, you played
a bold game."
"That is why we won," said Sarrion, stoutly.
"And you did not heed the risks."
"What risks?"
Juanita turned and looked at him with a little laugh of scorn.
"Oh, you do not understand. Neither does Marcos. I suppose men don't. You
might have ruined several lives."
"So might Evasio Mon," returned Sarrion sharply. And Juanita rather drew
back as a fencer may flinch who has been touched.
Sarrion leant back in his chair and threw away the cigarette which he had
not smoked. Juanita had chosen her own ground and he had met her on it.
He had answered the question which she was too proud to ask.
And as he had anticipated, Evasio Mon came to Torre Garda. It was almost
dusk when he arrived. Whether he knew that Marcos was not in his room,
remained an open question. He did not ask after him. He was brought by
the servant to the terrace where he found Cousin Peligros and Juanita.
Sarrion was in his study and came out when Mon passed the open window.
"So we are all besieged," said the visitor, with his tolerant smile as he
took a chair offered to him in the grand manner by Cousin Peligros, who
belonged to the school of etiquette that holds it wrong for any lady to
be natural in the presence of men other than of her own family.
Cousin Peligros smiled in rather a pinched way, and with a gesture of her
outspread hands morally wiped the besiegers out. No female Sarrion, she
seemed to imply, need ever fear inconvenience from a person in uniform.
"You and I, Señorita," said Mon, with his bland and easy sympathy of
manner, "have no business here. We are persons of peace."
Cousin Peligros made a condescending and yet decisive gesture, patting
the empty air.
"I have my charge. I shall fulfil it," she said--determined, and not
without a suggestion of coyness withal.
Juanita was lying in wait for a glance from Sarrion and when she received
it she made a little movement of the eyelids, telling him to take Cousin
Peligros away.
"You will stay the night," said Sarrion to Evasio Mon.
"No, my friend. Thank you very much. I cherish a hope of getting through
the lines to-night to Pampeluna. I came indeed to offer my poor services
as escort to these ladies who will surely be safer at Pampeluna."
"Then you think that they will besiege Torre Garda," asked Sarrion,
innocently. "One never knows, my friend--one never knows. It seems to me
that the firing is nearer this afternoon."
Sarrion laughed.
"You are always hearing guns."
Mon turned and looked at him and there was a suggestion of melancholy in
his smile.
"Ah! Ramon," he said. "You and I have heard them all our lives."
And there was perhaps a second meaning in his words, known only to
Sarrion, whose face softened for an instant.
"Let us have some coffee," he said, turning to Cousin Peligros. "Will you
see to it, Peligros--in the library?"
So Peligros walked across the broad terrace with the mincing steps taught
in the thirties, leaving Mon hatless with a bowed head according to the
etiquette of those leisurely days. He was all things, to all men.
"By the way ..." said Sarrion, and followed her without completing his
sentence.
So Juanita and Evasio Mon were left alone on the terrace. Juanita was
sitting rather upright in a garden chair. The only seat near to her was
the easy chair just vacated by Cousin Peligros. Mon looked at it. He
glanced at Juanita and then drew it forward. She turned, and with a smile
and gesture invited him to be seated. A watchful look came into Evasio
Mon's quick eyes behind the glasses that reflected the last rays of the
setting sun. For the young and the guilty, silence has a special terror.
Mon had dealt with the young and the guilty all his life. He sat down
without speaking. He was waiting for Juanita. Juanita moved her toe
within her neat black slipper, looking at it critically. She was waiting
for Evasio Mon. He paused as a duellist may pause with his best weapons
laid out on the table before him, wondering which one to select. Perhaps
he suspected that Juanita held the keenest; that deadly plain-speaking.
His subtle training had taught him to sink self so completely that it was
easy to him to insinuate his mind into the thoughts of another; to
understand them, almost to sympathise with them. But Juanita puzzled him.
There is no face so baffling as that which a woman shows the world when
she is hiding her heart.
"I spoke as a friend," said Mon, "when I recommended you to allow me to
escort you to Pampeluna."
"I know that you always speak as a friend," answered Juanita quietly,
"... of mine. Not of Marcos, perhaps."
"Ah, but your friends are Marcos'," said Mon, with a suggestion of
raillery in his voice.
"And his enemies are mine," she retorted, looking straight in front of
her.
"Of course--is it not written in the marriage service?" Mon laughingly
turned in his chair and cast a glance up at the windows as he spoke. They
were beyond earshot of the house. "But why should I be an enemy of Marcos
de Sarrion?"
Then Juanita unmasked her guns.
"Because he outwitted you and married me," she answered.
"For your money--"
"Yes, for my money. He was quite honest about it, I assure you. He told
me that it was a matter of business--of politics. That was the word he
used."
"He told you that?" asked Mon in real surprise.
Juanita nodded her head. She was looking at her own slipper again and the
moving foot within it. There was a mystic little smile at the corner of
her lips which tilted upwards there, as humorous and tender lips nearly
always do. It suggested that she knew something which even Evasio Mon,
the all-wise, did not know.
"And you believed him?" inquired Mon, dimly groping at the meaning of the
smile.
"He told me that it was the only way of escaping you ... and the rest of
them ... and Religion," answered Juanita--without answering the question.
"And you believed him?" repeated Mon, which was a mistake; for she turned
on him at once and answered,
"Yes."
Mon shrugged his shoulders with the tolerant air of one who has met
defeat time after time; who expected naught else perhaps.
"Then there is nothing more to be said," he observed carelessly. "You
elect to remain at Torre Garda. I bow to your decision, my child. I have
warned you."
"Against Marcos?"
Mon shrugged his shoulders a second time.
"And in reply to your warning," said Juanita slowly. "I will tell you
that Marcos has never done or said anything unworthy of a Spanish
gentleman--and there is no better gentleman in the world."
Which statement all men will assuredly be ready to admit.
Mon turned and looked at her with an odd smile.
"Ah!" he said. "You have fallen in love with Marcos."
Juanita changed colour and her eyes suddenly lighted with anger.
"I am not afraid of anything you may say or do," she said. "I have
Marcos. Marcos has always outwitted you when you have come in contact
with him. Marcos is cleverer than you. He is stronger."
She paused. Mon was slowly drawing his gloves through his hands which
were white and smooth.
"That is the difference between you," she continued. "You wear gloves.
Marcos takes hold of life with his bare hand. You may be more cunning,
but Marcos outwits you. The mind seeks but the heart finds. Your mind may
be subtle--but Marcos has a better heart."
Mon had risen. He stood with his face half turned away from her so that
she could only see his profile. And for a moment she was sorry for him;
that one moment which always mars an earthly victory.
He turned away from her and walked slowly towards the library window
which stood open and gave passage to the sound of moving cups and
saucers. We all carry with us through life the remembrance of certain
words probably forgotten by the speaker. A few bear the keener, sharper
memory of words unspoken. Juanita never forgot the silence of Evasio Mon
as he walked away from her.
A moment later she heard him laughing and talking in the library.
He had come on horseback and Sarrion accompanied him to the stables on
his departure. They were both young for their years. The Spaniards of the
north are thin and lithe and long-lived. Sarrion offered his hand for
Mon's knee, who with this aid sprang into the saddle.
He turned and looked towards the terrace.
"Juanita," he said, and paused. "She is no longer a child. One hopes that
she may have a happy life ... seeing that so many do not."
Sarrion made no answer.
"We are not weaklings," continued Mon lightly. "You, and Marcos and I. We
may sweat and toil as we will--but believe me, there is more power in
Juanita's little finger. It is the casting vote--amigo--the casting
vote."
He waved a salutation as he rode away.