SIGNALS OF STORM
A long strip of Moorish-looking wall and certain towers that glittered
white in the sun, advertised to Rollo that he approached the venta of
Sarria. Without, that building might have passed for the palace of a
grandee; within--but we know already what it was like within.
Rollo was impatient to find his companions. He had just discovered that
he had most scurvily neglected them, and now he was all eagerness to
make amends. But the house-place of the Cafe de Madrid was tenanted only
by the Valiant and a clean silently-moving maid, who solved the problem
of perpetual motion by finding something to do simultaneously in the
kitchen, out in the shady _patio_ among the copper water-vessels, and up
in the sleeping chambers above.
Rollo's questioning produced nothing but a sleepy grunt from Don Gaspar
Perico.
"Gone--no! They had better not," he muttered, "better not--without
paying their score--bread and ham and eggs, to say nothing of the noise
and disturbance they had occasioned. The tallest was a spitfire, a
dare-devil--ah, your excellency, I did not know----"
Here Don Gaspar the Valiant, who had been muttering in his beard more
than half asleep, awoke suddenly to the fact that the dare-devil
aforesaid stood before him, fingering his sword-hilt and twisting his
moustache.
But he was a stout old soldier, this Gaspar Perico, and had a moustache
of his own which he could finger with anybody.
"I crave your pardon, Senor," he said, rising and saluting, "I think I
must have been asleep. Until this moment I was not aware of your
honourable presence."
"My companions--where are they?" said Rollo, hastily. He had much on his
mind, and wished to despatch business. Patience he had none. If a girl
refused him he sprang into the first ship and betook himself to other
skies and kinder maidens. If a battle went wrong, he would fight on to
the death, or at least till he was beaten into unconsciousness. But of
the cautious generalship which draws off in safety and lives to fight
another day, Rollo had not a trace.
"Your companions--nay, I know nothing of them," said the veteran: "true
it is he of the stoutness desired to buy my wine, and when I gave him a
sample, fine as iced Manzanilla, strong as the straw-wine of Jerez, he
spat it forth upon the ground and vowed that as to price he preferred
the ordinary robbers of the highway!"
Rollo laughed a little at this description of John Mortimer's method of
doing business, but he was eager to find his comrades, so he hastily
excused himself, apologised for his companion's rudeness, setting it
down to the Senor Mortimer's ignorance of the language, and turned to go
out.
But as he passed into the arcaded _patio_ of the inn, the silent
maid-servant passed him with a flash of white cotton gown. Her grass
shoes made no noise on the pavement. As she passed, Rollo glanced at
her quickly and carelessly, as it was his nature to look at every woman.
She was beckoning to him to follow her. There could be no doubt of that.
She turned abruptly through a low doorway upon the top of which Rollo
nearly knocked out his brains.
The Scot followed down a flight of steps, beneath blossoming oleander
bushes, and found himself presently upon a narrow terrace-walk, divided
from a neighbouring garden by a lattice of green-painted wood.
The silent maid-servant jerked her thumb a little contemptuously over
her shoulder, elevated her chin, and turning on her heel disappeared
again into her own domains.
Rollo stood a moment uncertain whether to advance or retreat. He was in
a narrow path which skirted a garden in which fuchsias, geraniums, and
dwarf palms grew abundantly. Roses also clambered among the
lattice-work, peered through the chinks, and drooped invitingly over the
top.
A little to the right the path bent somewhat, and round the corner Rollo
could hear a hum of voices. It was in this direction also that the
silent handmaid of Gaspar Perico's kitchen had jerked her thumb.
Rollo moved slowly along the path, and presently he came in sight of a
pretty damsel on the farther side of the trellis paling, deeply engaged
in a most interesting conversation. So far as he could see she was tall
and dark, with the fully formed Spanish features, a little heavy perhaps
to Rollo's taste, but charming now with the witchery of youth and
conscious beauty.
Her hand had been drawn through one of the diamond-shaped apertures of
the green trellis-work, which proved how small a hand it was. And, so
far as the young Scot could judge from various contributory movements on
the lady's part, it was at that moment being passionately kissed by some
person unseen.
The low voice he had heard also proceeded from this fervent lover, and
the whole performance made Rollo most unreasonably angry.
"What fools!" he muttered, turning on his heel, adding as an
afterthought, "and especially at this time of day."
He was walking off in high dudgeon, prepared to give the silent maid a
piece of his mind--indeed, a sample most unpleasing, when something in
the tone of the lover's voice attracted him.
"Fairest Maria, never have I loved before," the voice was saying. "I
have wandered the world heretofore, careless and heart-free, that I
might have the more to offer to you, the pearl of girls, the all
incomparable Maria of Sarria!"
The fair hand thrust through the lattices was violently agitated at this
point. Its owner had caught sight of Rollo standing on the pathway, but
the lover's grasp was too firm. As Rollo looked a head was thrust
forward and downwards--as it were into the picture. And there, kneeling
on the path, was Monsieur Etienne, lately Brother Hilario of Montblanch,
fervidly kissing the hand of reluctant beauty.
As Rollo, unwilling to intrude, but secretly resolving to give Master
Lovelace no peace for some time, was turning away, a sharp exclamation
from the girl caused the kneeling lover to look up. She snatched her
hand through the interstices of the palisades on the instant, fled
upward through the rose and fuchsia bushes with a swift rustle of
skirts, and disappeared into a neighbouring house.
Etienne de Saint Pierre rose in a leisurely manner, dusted the knees of
his riding-breeches, twirled his moustache, and looked at Rollo, who
stood on the path regarding him.
"Well, what in the devil's name brings you here?" he demanded.
The mirthful mood in which he had watched his comrade kneel was already
past with Rollo.
"Come outside, and I will tell you," he said, and without making any
further explanation or asking for any from Etienne, he strode back
through the courtyard of the venta and out into the sunlit road.
A muleteer was passing, sitting sideways on his beast's back as on an
easy-chair, and as he went by he offered the two young men to drink out
of a leathern goatskin of wine with a courteous wave of the hand. Rollo
declined equally courteously.
Then turning to his friend, who still continued to scowl, he said
abruptly, "Where is Mortimer?"
"Nay, that I know not--looking for another meal, I suppose," answered
the little Frenchman, shrugging his shoulders, one higher than the
other.
Rollo glanced at him from under his gloomy brows.
"Nay," he said, "this is serious. I need your help. Do not fail me
to-night, and help me to find Mortimer. I had not the smallest intention
of intruding upon you. Indeed, but for that maid at the inn, I should
never have found you."
"Ah," commented Etienne, half to himself, "so I owe it to that minx, do
I? Yes, it is a mistake--so close as that. But no matter; what can I do
for you?"
"It is not for myself," Rollo answered, and forthwith in a low voice
told his tale, the Frenchman assenting with a nod of the head as each
point was made clear to him.
Unconsciously they had strolled out of the village in the direction of
the Convent of the Holy Innocents, and they were almost under its walls
when the little Frenchman, looking up suddenly, recognised with a start
whither he was being led.
"Let us turn back," he said hastily; "I have forgotten an engagement!"
"What, another?" cried Rollo. "If we stay here three days you will have
the whole village on your hands, and at least half a dozen knives in
your back. But if you are afraid of the Senorita Concha, I think I can
promise you that she is not breaking her heart on your account!"
In spite of this assurance, however, Etienne was not easy in his mind
till they had turned about and were returning towards the village. But
they had not left the white walls of the Convent behind, before they
were hailed in English by a stentorian voice.
"Here, you fellows," it said, "here's a whole storehouse of onions as
big as a factory--strings and strings of 'em. I wanted to go inside to
make an offer for the lot, and the old witch at the gate slammed it in
my face."
Looking round, they saw John Mortimer standing on one leg to eke out his
stature, and squinting through a hole in the whitewashed wall. One hand
was beckoning them frantically forward, while with the other he was
trying to render his position on a sun-dried brick less precarious.
"I suppose we must go back," said Etienne, with a sigh; "imagine
standing on a brick and getting so hot and excited--in the blazing sun,
too--all for a few strings of onions. I declare I would not do it for
the prettiest girl in Spain!"
But there could be no doubt whatever that the Englishman was in earnest.
Indeed, he did not move from his position till they were close upon him,
and then only because the much-enduring brick resolved itself into its
component sand and sun-dried clay.
"Just look there!" he cried eagerly; "did you ever see the like of
that--a hundred double strings hung from the ceiling to the floor right
across! And the factory nearly a hundred and fifty yards long. There's a
ship-load of onions there, a solid cargo, I tell you, and I want to
trade. I believe I could make my thousand pounds quicker that way, and
onions are as good as wine any day! Look in, look in!"
To satisfy his friend, Rollo applied his eye to the aperture, and saw
that one of the Convent buildings was indeed filled with onions, as John
Mortimer had said. It was a kind of cloister open at one side, and with
rows of pillars. The wind rustling through the pendant strings filled
the place with a pleasant noise, distinctly audible even outside the
wall.
"A thousand pounds, Rollo," moaned John Mortimer, "and that old wretch
at the wicket only laughed at me, and snapped the catch in my face. They
don't understand business here. I wish I had them apprenticed to my
father at Chorley for six months, only for six months. They'd know the
difference!"
Rollo took his friend's arm and drew him away.
"This is not the time for it," he said soothingly, "wait. We are going
to the Convent to-night. The Mother Superior has permitted the lady on
whose account we are here to be removed there after dark, and we want
your help."
"Can I speak to the old woman about the onions then?"
"Certainly, if there is an opportunity," said Rollo, smiling.
"Which I take leave to doubt," thought Etienne to himself, as he
meditated on his own troubles in the matter of little Concha and the
maiden of the green lattice.
"Very well, then," said Mortimer, "I'm your man; I don't mind doing a
little cloak-and-dagger considered as trimmings--but business is
business."
The three friends proceeded venta-wards, and just as they passed the
_octroi_ gate the same muleteer who had passed them outward bound, went
in before them with the same leathern bottle in his hand. And as he
entered he tossed his hand casually towards Gaspar Perico, who sat in
the receipt of custom calmly reading an old newspaper.
"Now that's curious," said John Mortimer, "that fellow had a red and
white cloth in his hand. And all the time when I was skirmishing about
after those onions in the nuns' warehouse, they were waving red and
white flags up on the hills over there--_wig wag_ like that!"
And with his hand he illustrated the irregular and arbitrary behaviour
of the flags upon the hills which overlooked the village of Sarria to
the south.
And at the sound of his words Rollo started, and his countenance
changed. It was then no mere delusion of the eye and brain that he had
seen when he entered the precincts of the mill-house of Sarria, as La
Giralda would fain have persuaded him. The thought started a doubt in
his mind.
Who after all was that old woman? And what cause had El Sarria for
trusting her? None at all, so far as Rollo knew, save that she hated the
Tia Elvira. Then that flicker of red and white on the hillside to the
south among the scattered boulders and juniper bushes, and the favour of
the same colour in the muleteer's hand as he went through the gate!
Verily Rollo had some matter for reflection, as, with his comrades, one
on either hand of him, he strolled slowly back to the venta.
"I wonder," said John Mortimer, as if to himself, "if that young woman
who walks like a pussycat will have luncheon ready for us. I told her to
roast the legs of the lamb I bought at the market this morning, and make
an _olla_ of the rest. But I don't believe she understands her own
language--a very ignorant young woman indeed."
"I, on the other hand, think she knows too much," murmured Etienne to
himself.
But Rollo, the red and white flutter of the mysterious signal flags
before his eyes, seen between him and the white-hot sky of day, only
sighed, and wished that the night would anticipate itself by a few
hours.
And so, dinner being over, and even John Mortimer satisfied, the drowsy
afternoon of Sarria wore on, the clack of the mill-wheel down at the
mill, and the clink of the anvil where Jaime Casanovas, the smith, was
shoeing a horse, being the only sounds without; while in the venta
itself the whisk of the skirts of the silent handmaid, who with a
perfectly grave face went about her work, alone broke the silence. But
Monsieur Etienne's ears tingled red, for he was conscious that as often
as she passed behind his chair, she smiled a subtle smile.
He thought on the green lattices and the path so near and so cool. But
with all his courage he could not go out under the observant eyes of
Rollo and with that abandoned Abigail smiling her ironic smile. So,
perforce, he had to sit uneasily with his elbows on the table and watch
the dreary game of dominoes which his companions were playing with the
chipped and greasy cubes belonging to the venta of Gaspar and Esteban
Perico.
And outside, though they knew it not, the red and white pennon was still
flying from the roof of the mill-house of Sarria, and on the hills to
the south, through the white sun-glare, flickered at intervals an
answering signal.
Meanwhile in a hushed chamber the outlaw sat with his wife's hand in
his, and thought on nothing, save that for him the new day had come.