THE HOLY INNOCENTS
With small compunction El Sarria turned Don Tomas over with his foot and
coolly appropriated the cloak he had discarded, as also his headgear,
which was banded with gay colours, and of the shape affected by the
dandies of Seville.
Then swinging the cloak about him, and setting the hat upon his head
jauntily, he strode to the garden door.
Above he could hear the angry voice of a woman, with intervals of
silence as if for a low-toned inaudible reply. Then came a wail of
despair and grief--that nearly sent him up the stairs at a tiger's rush,
which would have scattered his enemies before him like chaff. For it was
the voice of his Dolores he heard for the second time. But of late El
Sarria had learned some of the wisdom of caution. He knew not the force
Luis might have within the house, and he might only lose his own life
without benefiting either Dolores or his son.
Then there was a slow foot on the stairs, coming down. The light went
out above, and he heard a heavy breathing behind the closed door by
which he stood.
"Tomas--Tomas!" said a voice, "here is the brat. It is asleep; do it
quietly, so that the mother may not be alarmed. I cannot stir without
her hearing me and asking the reason."
And in the arms of Ramon Garcia was placed the breathing body of his
first-born son. The door was shut before he could move, so astonished he
was by the curious softness of that light burden, and Tia Elvira's
unamuleted groin escaped safe for that time--which, indeed, afterwards
turned out to be just as well.
So at the door of his enemy El Sarria stood dumb and stricken, the babe
in his arms. For the fact that this child was the son of his little
Dolores, annihilated for the moment even revenge in his soul.
But a hand was laid on his shoulder.
"Haste thee, haste," hissed the witch-wife, La Giralda, Elvira's friend
and rival, "hast thou smitten strongly? She lies behind the door. I
cannot hear her breath, so all must be well. I saw thee stoop to the
blow. Well done, well done! And the brain-pan of the ill-disposed and
factious Senor Tomas is comfortably cracked, too. He had but sevenpence
in his pockets, together with a bad peseta with a hole in it. Such
fellows have no true moral worth. But come away, come away! Presently
Don Luis will miss the Tia and give the alarm. Give me the babe!"
But this Ramon would not do, holding jealously to his own.
"What can you, a man, do with a babe?" she persisted. "Can you stop its
mouth from crying? Is there milk in your breasts to feed its little
blind mouth? Give it to me, I say!"
"Nay," said El Sarria, shaking her off, "not to you. Did not this
murderous woman come from your waggons? Is not her place under your
canvas?"
"It shall be so no more, if your stroke prove true," said the gipsy. "I
shall be the queen and bring up this youngling to be the boldest
horse-thief betwixt this filthy Aragon and the Gipsy-barrio of Granada,
where La Giralda's cave dives deepest into the rock."
"No, I will not!" said the man, grasping the babe so tightly that it
whimpered, and stretched its little body tense as a bowstring over his
arm. "I will take him to the hills and suckle him with goat's milk! He
shall be no horse-thief, but a fighter of men!"
"Ah, then you are an outlaw--a lad of the hills? I thought so," chuckled
the woman. "Come away quickly, then, brave manslayer; I know a better
way than either. The sisters, the good women of the convent, will take
him at a word from me. I know the night watch--a countrywoman of mine,
little Concha. She will receive him through the wicket and guard him
well--being well paid, that is, as doubtless your honour can pay!"
"What, little Concha Cabezos?" said Ramon with instant suspicion. "Was
she not a traitress to her mistress? Was it not through her treachery
that her mistress came hither?"
"Little Concha--a traitress," laughed the old woman. "Nay--nay! you know
her not, evidently. She may, indeed, be almost everything else that a
woman can be, as her enemies say. No cloistered Santa Teresa is our
little Concha, but, for all that, she is of a stock true to her salt,
and only proves fickle to her wooers. Come quickly and speak with her.
She is clever, the little Concha, and her advice is good."
They passed rapidly along the road, deep in white dust, but slaked now
with the dew, and cool underfoot. The babe lifted up his voice and
wept.
"Here, give him me. I cannot run away with him if I would," said the
gipsy. "You may keep your hand on my arm, if only you will but give him
me!"
And the gipsy woman lifted the little puckered features to her cheek,
and crooned and clucked till the child gradually soothed itself to sleep
face-down on her shoulder.
"How came Concha at the house of the nuns?" said Ramon.
"That you must ask herself," answered the woman; "some quarrel it was.
Luis Fernandez never loved her. He wished her out of the house from the
first. But here we are!"
First came a great whitewashed forehead of blind wall, then in the midst
a small circular tower where at one side was a door, heavily guarded
with great iron plates and bolts, and on the other a deep square
aperture in which was an iron turnstile--the House of the Blessed
Innocents at last.
The gipsy woman went directly up to the wicket, and whispered through
the turnstile. There was a dim light within, which presently brightened
as if a lamp had been turned up.
The woman stepped back to El Sarria's side.
"The little Concha is on duty," she whispered. "Go thou up and speak
with her! Nay, take the child if thou art so jealous of him. I would not
have stolen the boy. Had the nationals not killed El Sarria at the
Devil's Gorge, I had said that thou wert the man himself!"
Ramon took the babe awkwardly.
"At any event thou art a brave fighter," she murmured, "and cracked that
evil-doing Tomas's skull for him to a marvel. Thou shalt have all the
help La Giralda can give thee!"
Ramon, with the babe in his arms, put his head within, and spoke to
Concha. A little cry, swiftly checked, came forth from the whitewashed
portress' lodge of the House of the Innocents. Then after five minutes
Ramon kissed the little puckered face of his son, and each of the
dimpled fat red hands he held so tightly clenched, and laid him on the
revolving iron plate of the conventual turnstile. Without a creek the
axle turned, and in a moment more the child was in the arms of Holy
Church, pleasantly represented for the nonce by the very secular charms
of little Concha Cabezos.
Then a word or two were spoken. Concha told the outlaw how, by a letter
purporting to come from himself, forged by Don Luis or his brother,
Dolores had been advised to put herself under the protection of his
beloved friend Don Luis Fernandez "until the happier days." Concha also
told how the miller had found an excuse to send her from the house in
disgrace, and how for her needlework and skill in fine broidery she had
been received at the Convent of the Holy Innocents, how Manuela from the
priest's house and this gipsy wise-woman "Tia Elvira" had watched over
Dolores ever since, not allowing her to hold any communication with the
outside world, and especially with her former waiting-maid.
"Then came the news of your death," she continued, "and after that the
guard upon Dolores was redoubled, and till to-night I have heard
nothing. But the babe shall be safe and unknown here among the sisters.
Yet for the future's sake give me some token that you may claim him by.
All such things are entered in a book as being brought with a child."
El Sarria passed within the turnstile a golden wristlet his mother had
given him at his first communion, when he was the best and most dutiful
boy in all Sarria, and held by the priest to be a pattern communicant.
"Can you not stay yet other twenty-four hours in Sarria?" asked Concha.
"If so, we must try to bring your Dolores where she will be as safe as
the child."
"I would stay a year to preserve from harm a hair of her head--I who
have wronged her!"
"Ah," sighed Concha through the wicket, as if she knew all about
unworthy suspicion on the part of lovers, "men are like that. They are
ready to suspect the most loving and the most innocent, but we women
forgive them!"
Then pouting her pretty red lips the little Concha spoke low in the ear
of El Sarria a while. After five minutes of this whispered colloquy, she
added aloud--
"Then we will proceed. Go, do your part. You may trust La Giralda. Go
quickly. You have much to do."
And little Concha snapped to the shutter of the wicket in his face.
Much to do. Yes, it was true. What with Dolores in the power of his
false friend Luis and the evil hag Tia Elvira, his gentlemen to attend
upon at their inn, and the grave-digger lying with a broken head in the
garden, El Sarria might be said to have had some private business upon
his hands. And this, too, in addition to his affairs of state--the
Abbot's commission, his own outlawry, and the equal certainty of his
being shot whether he fell into the hands of the Carlists or of the
national soldiers.
Yet in spite of all these, never since the evil night of his first
home-coming to Sarria had he been so happy as when he retraced his way
in company with La Giralda in the direction of the mill-house.
And as he went, thinking no thought save of Dolores and his love,
suddenly the only man who would have dared to cross his path stood
before him.
"Ah, sirrah," cried Rollo the Scot, "is this your service? To run the
country with women--and not even to have the sense to choose a pretty
one. What mean you by this negligence, dog of Galicia?"
"I attend to my own affairs," answered Ramon, with a sullen and boding
quiet; "do me the favour to go about yours."
Hot-blood Rollo leaped upon him without a word, taking the older and
stronger man at unawares with his young litheness. He saw Ramon's
fingers moving to the knife in its sheath by his side. But ere they
could reach it, his hand was on the giant's wrist and his pistol at his
ear.
"A finger upon your Albacetan and you die!" cried Rollo. "I would have
you Gallegans learn that the servant is not greater than his lord."
Now Ramon knew that not his life, but that of Rollo, hung on a hair. For
he was conscious that La Giralda's knife was bare and that that
determined lady was simply choosing her opportunity. If Rollo had been
older most likely Ramon would have waited motionless for Giralda's
thrust, and then turned the young man under his heel, precisely as he
had done to the grave-digger earlier in the evening. But as they rode
from the abbey he had admired the young fellow's gallant bearing and
perhaps heard also of his flouting of his own Miguelete enemies at the
inn of San Vicente. So for this time he had pity upon him.
"Stand back, Giralda," he commanded. Then to Rollo he said, "Forgive my
seeming negligence, Senor. It was only seeming. The honour of my wife
and the life of my child are at stake. I am Ramon Garcia the outlaw,
whom you saw fall upon the altar of the Abbey of Montblanch. This is my
home. My wife is here and near to death in the house of mine enemy. Let
these things be my excuse!"
Rollo dropped his pistol, like a good sportsman mechanically uncocking
it as he did so. His generous impulses were as fierce and swift as his
other passions.
"Tell me all," he said, "'fore God I will help you--ay, before any king
or monk on earth. A brave man in such trouble has the first claim of all
upon Rollo Blair!"
"And your companions?" said El Sarria.
"I give myself no trouble about them," cried Rollo. "Senor Mortimer will
visit the vineyards and wine cellars to-morrow and be happy. And as for
gay Master Etienne, has he not the little Concha to search for? Besides,
even if he had not, he would not be six hours in the place without
starting a new love affair."
Then, as they turned backwards along the road, El Sarria told Rollo all
his tale, and the young Scot found himself, for the first time, deep
among the crude mother-stuff of life and passion.
"And I thought that I had lived!" he said, and looked long at the huge
form of the outlaw by his side, to whom deadly peril was as meat and
drink, whom any man might slay, and gain a reward for the deed.
"I see it!" cried Rollo, whose quick brain caught the conditions of the
problem even as Ramon was speaking. "And if I help, my companions will
help also. I answer for them!"
For this young man was in the habit, not only of undertaking remarkable
adventures himself, but, out of mere generosity, of engaging his friends
in them as well. Yet never for a moment did Rollo doubt that he was
acting, not only for the best, but positively in a manner so reasonable
as to be almost humdrum.
So upon this occasion, finding El Sarria in difficulties, he pledged
himself to the hilt to assist that picturesque outlaw. Yet, doubtless,
had he first come across a captain of Migueletes in trouble about
Ramon's capture, he would have taken a hand in bringing about that event
with a truly admirable and engaging impartiality. This was perhaps the
quality which most of all endeared Rollo to his friends.
"Concha--Concha," Rollo was thinking deeply and quickly; "tell me what
kind of girl is this Concha?"
"She is as other girls," said El Sarria, indifferently enough, who had
not till that night troubled his head much about her, "a good enough
girl--a little light-hearted, perhaps, but then--she is an Andaluse, and
what can you expect? Also well-looking----"
"And has been told so as often as I was in my youth!" said the old woman
La Giralda, breaking in. "Of Concha Cabezos this man knows nothing, even
if he be El Sarria risen from the dead (as indeed I suspected from the
first). And if, as he says, she is somewhat light of heart and heel,
the little Concha has a wise head and a heart loyal to all except her
would-be lovers. Being a Sevillana, and with more than a drop of Romany
blood in her veins, she hath never gotten the knack of that. But you may
trust her with your life, young stranger, aye, or (what is harder) with
another woman's secret. Only, meantime, do not make love to her. That is
a game at which the Senorita Concha always wins!"
Rollo twirled his moustache, and thought. He was not so sure. At
twenty-five, to put a woman on such a pedestal is rather a whet to the
appetite of a spirited young man.
"And what do you intend to do with the grave-digging Fernandez?" asked
Rollo.
"Why," said Ramon, simply, "to tell truth, I intended to cover him up in
the grave he had made, all but his head, and let him get out as best he
could!"
"Appropriate," agreed Rollo, "but crude, and in the circumstances not
feasible. We must take this Fernandez indoors after we have arranged the
garrison of the house. We will make his brother nurse him. Fraternal
affection was never better employed, and it will keep them both out of
mischief. And how soon, think you, could your wife be moved?" asked
Rollo.
Ramon shrugged his shoulders helplessly, and turned to La Giralda.
"When I had my second," she said ("he that was hanged at Gibraltar by
the English because the man he stabbed died in order to spite him), it
was at the time of the vintage. And, lo! all unexpectedly I was
overtaken even among the very clusters. So I went aside behind the
watcher's _cana_ huts.... And after I had washed the boy I went back
and finished my row. There are no such women in these days, El Sarria.
This of thine----"
"Peace, Giralda," said Ramon, sternly; "Dolores is as a dove, and weak
from long trouble of heart. On your head, I ask of you, could we move
her in twenty-four hours and yet risk nothing of the life?"
"Yes, as the Virgin sees me," asserted La Giralda, holding up her hands,
"if so be I have the firming of the bands about her--of linen wide and
strong they must be made--to be mine own afterwards. And then she must
be carried between four stout men, as I will show you how."
"It shall be done," cried Rollo. "I will find the men, do you provide
the linen, El Sarria. I will hie me to the convent early to-morrow
morning and talk with this little Concha!"
"You will not be admitted," said La Giralda, somewhat scornfully; "the
Mother Superior is most strict with all within the walls."
"But I shall ask for the Mother Superior," said the modest youth, "and,
gad! if I get only six quiet minutes of the old lady, I warrant she will
refuse me nothing--even to the half of her kingdom. Meantime, here we
are! Is it not so?"
The huge black circle of the mill-wheel rose before them against the
whitewash of the un-windowed wall. They could not see the mill-house
itself from this point, and they halted before going further, in order
to make their dispositions.
"What we are going to do is not strictly within the letter of the law,"
explained Rollo, cheerfully, "but it is the best I can think of, and
containing as it does the elements of justice, may commend itself as a
solution to all parties. If these Fernandez gentlemen kidnap other
men's wives, devise the murder of their children, and strive to have the
men themselves shot, they cannot very well complain of a little
illegality. This is the house. Well, it must be ours for twenty-four
hours--no more, no less. Then, if no accidents happen, we will return it
to Senor Luis Fernandez. All set? _Adelante_, then!"
And with Rollo in the van, El Sarria following a little behind and La
Giralda bolting the doors and generally protecting the rear, the party
of possession went upwards into the mill-house to argue the matter at
length with Senor Luis and his friend the Tia Elvira.
These worthy people, however, were not in the sick-chamber of Dolores
Garcia, which, on the whole, was just as well. At an earlier part of the
night the Tia had administered to Dolores a potion which caused her to
sleep soundly for several hours. For the Tia was skilled in simples, as
well as in a good many things of a nature far from simple. A faint
clinking sound, as of counting money, guided Rollo to the spot.
The master of the house and his faithful "Tia" sat bending over a table
in the upper hall, or general meeting-place of the family. The door
which opened off the stairway up which the visitors came, gave a slight
creak, but Luis Fernandez and his associate were so engrossed in their
work that neither of them lifted their eyes.
A considerable number of trinkets of gold and silver, articles of
attire, crucifixes, and ornaments were spread out upon the table. As
soon as Ramon's eyes fell upon these, Rollo felt him grip his arm
convulsively, but the young man resolutely kept the outlaw behind him.
The time was not yet.
Tia Elvira was not for the moment on good terms with her companion.
"Listen, Luis Fernandez," she said, extending a pair of withered claws
across the table like the talons of some unclean bird; "if you think
that I am going to do your business and run hot chances of the iron
necklace that has no beads, and then when all is done allow your
father's son to cheat me out of my dues, you are much mistaken. If you
do not deliver me all the ornaments her husband gave this woman Dolores,
according to your agreement, by the chief of the devils that inhabit the
four hells I will go to the _Corregidor_ to-morrow at day-break and
lodge information against you and your brother for the crime of child
murder!"
"And where, think you, would you find yourself in such a case?" quoth
Luis Fernandez, a cold-eyed, dark-haired man of forty years of age. He
sat leaning well over the table, the more precious of the objects
gathered between his arms. "You were the nurse in attendance, my Tia--to
that the _Sangrador_ would bear witness. He left you in charge of the
infant, my dear aunt. And though times are hard and men in office
unbelieving, I still think that I, Luis Fernandez, could command enough
testimony in this town to bring the guilt (if guilt there be) home to a
certain Elvira the Gipsy, whose record, at any rate, is none of the
best!"
He laughed a little chuckling laugh as the hag exploded into a swarm of
crabbed gipsy oaths.
"But enough of this, Tia," he said; "be reasonable, and you will find me
generous. Only I must be the judge of what is mine own, that is all, my
bitter-sweet Ronda pippin."
"Curses upon you and all that you may bring forth, on your burying, on
your children and your children's children!" cried the woman.
"Come--come--that will do, Tia," cried Luis, striking the table with his
hand. "I value not your curses this single fig of Spain." (Here he made
towards her the gesture with finger and thumb which averts the evil
eye.) "But if I hear any more of this I will put you to the door without
so much as a single silver spoon. Whereupon you will be welcome to do
your worst."
"I do not see why you want both the woman and the goods," whined the
Tia, altering her tone. "Did you not say that you desired to keep
nothing which would remind her of her old life? And have not I, by my
decoctions and distillations, kept this silly Dolores in a dream like
that of a child all these weeks since we got rid of that imp of Satan,
Concha Cabezos of Seville?"
"You have--you have indeed done well, my Tia," said the man soothingly,
"and you will find me by no means ungrateful. But come, let us get this
matter settled, and then I must go and look for my drunken
good-for-nothing of a brother, who has doubtless stolen the key of the
wine-cellar, and is at his old tricks again."
"Well, at any rate, I insist upon that string of silver beads," said the
old woman, greedily. "I have been thinking of it all these days, and do
not forget that it was I who wormed out of the widow the hiding-place
where that cunning little Concha had placed Ramon Garcia's strong box."
"There--take it, then," said the man impatiently, and a heavy string of
beads was slid across the table with a clanking noise. "I had not
thought you so good a Christian, Tia!"
"Oh, it is not that," chuckled the hag, clutching the necklace fiercely,
as a starving dog might fall on a bone, and concealing it instantly
beneath her skirts. "But each link hath the stamp upon it--the mint
stamp of Seville--and will pass current for a good duro wherever one may
chance to be. With such a necklace one can never be in want."
"Well," said Luis, "the devil fly away with you and it, Tia! I keep all
the ornaments of gold--let that be understood. My wife might, upon an
occasion, take a yearning for them, and if I had them not to give her,
it might be to the danger of my house and succession. So this gold
cross----"
("My mother's!" breathed Ramon hotly in Rollo's ear.)
"This knife with the hilt top set with brilliants----"
("My father's--he had it from the great Lor' Wellington for a message he
brought to him at Vitoria.")
"These trifles--a pair of ear-rings, a ring of pearls, a comb for the
hair in gold--all these I reserve for myself."
As he spoke, he tossed them, one after the other, into a heavy
iron-bound box which, with chains and padlocks displayed, stood open
upon the floor.
As each article tinkled among the others, the Tia gave a little wince of
bodily pain, and her skinny talons scratched the wood of the table with
a sound distinctly audible at the door behind which the intruders stood.
Then a quick loud cackle of laughter came from Fernandez. He had found
something among the parchments.
"'Hereby I plight thee my troth,'" he read from a paper in his hand,
"'for ever and for ever, as a true heart and a true lover, signed,
Ramon.' This she has kept in a case in her bosom, I suppose, with the
picture of the oaf," he added, "and is as like him as it is like St.
Nicholas, the patron saint of all thieves. And, holy Michael in the
seventh heavens! here is their marriage certificate all complete--a very
treasure-house of connubial happiness. But these need not go into the
strong box. I, Luis Fernandez, have made an end of them. The woman is
mine, and so will I also make an end of these relics of folly."
He took the papers to tear them across, but the stout parchment resisted
a moment. His brow darkened, and he clutched them more securely to rend
them with an effort.
But a slight noise in the apartment and a cry from the Tia caused him to
look up.
A knife was at his throat, and a figure stood before him, one huge hand
pinning him to his seat.
"Ramon," he cried, his voice, which had been full of chuckling laughter,
rising suddenly to a thin shriek. "God in heaven, Ramon Garcia!"
And with a trembling hand he tried to cross himself.
"Give!" said Ramon, in a hollow voice, and mechanically the miller
placed the papers in his hands.
"'Fore God, Ramon, I thought you were dead!" gasped the man.
"No, friend, not dead," came the answer, "but Ramon Garcia come back in
the flesh to settle certain accounts with his well-beloved comrade and
brother of many years, Luis Fernandez, of the mill-house of Sarria."