LIKE FIRE THROUGH SUMMER GRASS
On the whole Rollo could not complain of his reception at the Abbey of
Montblanch. His heart had indeed been at war within him as he took his
way up the long zigzags of the hill road. There was the very thorn
branch which had brushed off his hat as he set forth so gladsomely with
his new commission in his pocket, his comrades riding staunchly by his
side, and the Abbot's good horse between his knees.
Well, he had done his best. Things, after their manner, had turned out
cross-grained--that was all. He had, thank Heaven, enough of
Mendizabal's generous draft left in his pocket to repay the Abbot for
what he had spent upon their outfit. After returning the commission, it
only remained as delicately as possible to impart the disastrous news of
the coming dissolution of monasteries and the date of the assumption of
all conventual property by the State.
Then he would depart. Sarria and Concha were not so far off. He began to
take heart even before he reached the great gate of the Abbey.
No one could have been more cordially moved to see a long-lost brother
than Don Baltasar Varela, the Abbot of Montblanch, to welcome his dear,
his well-beloved Don Rollo.
And his noble nephew Saint Pierre--how fared he? Then that stolid solemn
Englishman--did he know that his _Priorato_ had long been shipped from
Barcelona, an arrangement having been made with the Cristino
custom-house?
"But the price? He has not paid it. I warrant that Mortimer knows
nothing of the matter," said Rollo, excited for his friend's credit and
good name.
The Abbot smiled as he answered.
"Our agent in France," he said blandly, "has received and cashed a draft
from some one of the same name in England--ah, there are none like the
English for business the world over! But here is a letter which has long
been waiting for that young gentleman here."
"I will deliver it to him immediately, and with great pleasure," quoth
Rollo.
The Abbot did not pursue the subject, but rising, said courteously, "You
will excuse me for the present. You know the library. You will find my
Father-Confessor there, whom I think you have met. There are also works
on travel and lives of the saints in various languages, exceedingly
improving to the mind. And above all you must dine with me to-night."
Thus the Abbot, with a kindness which Rollo felt deeply, put off hearing
the full story of his adventures till the evening. Dinner was served in
the Prior's own chamber as before, but on this occasion much more
simply--indeed rather as two gentlemen might have dined at a good inn
where their arrival had been expected and prepared for.
Rollo's simple heart was opened by the hospitality shown him. The
beaming and paternal graciousness of Don Baltasar, the difference
between what he had expected and what he found, wrung his soul with
remorse for the message he had to deliver.
At last he was permitted to tell his tale, which he did from the
beginning, slurring only such matters as concerned his relations with
Concha. And at the end of each portion of his story the Abbot raised a
finger and said smilingly to his Father-Confessor, who stood gloomily
silent in the arch of the doorway, "A marvel--a wonder! You hear, Father
Anselmo?"
And without stirring a muscle of his immovable countenance the
ex-inquisitor answered, "I have heard, my Lord Abbot."
Then Rollo told of the plague and the strange things that had happened
at La Granja, their setting out thence with the Queen-Regent and the
little Princess, their safe arrival upon the spurs of Moncayo, almost
indeed at the camp of General Elio. Then, with his head for the first
time hanging down, he narrated the meeting with Cabrera, and that
General's determination to murder the Queen-Regent and her little
daughter.
"Abominations such as that no man could endure," said Rollo more than
once as he proceeded to tell the tale of their delivery, of how he had
despatched mother and daughter to the camp of General Elio, of their
subsequent capture by Espartero, and how he, Rollo Blair, had hastened
all the way from Madrid to lay the whole matter before the Prior.
"'Tis a marvellous tale, indeed, that our young friend tells--have you
missed nothing?" inquired the Abbot of the Father-Confessor.
"Nothing!" said the Confessor, glaring down upon Rollo as a vulture
might upon a weakly lamb on the meadows of Estramadura, "not one single
word hath escaped me!"
Then Rollo delivered to the Abbot (who handed them forthwith to his
reverend conscience-keeper) all his commissions and letters of
recommendation. With a drooping head and a tear in his eye, he gave them
up. For though he had enlisted in the Carlist cause purely as a
mercenary, he had yet meant to carry out his undertakings to the letter.
When at last Rollo looked up, he found the grey eyes of the Abbot
regarding him with a quiet persistence of scrutiny which perturbed him
slightly.
"Have you anything more to tell me?" inquired the ecclesiastic, laying
his hand affectionately on Rollo's shoulder, "you have done all that was
possible for you. No man could have done more. May a continual peace
abide in your heart, my son!"
"My Father," said Rollo, laying a strong constraint upon himself, "I
have indeed a thing to tell that is hard and painful. The monasteries
throughout all Spain are to be suppressed on the twentieth day of this
month by order of the Madrid Government."
As the words passed his lips, the bland expression on Don Baltasar's
face changed into one of fierce hatred and excitement. There was forced
from his lips that sharp hiss of indrawn breath which a man
instinctively makes as he winces under the surgeon's knife.
Then almost instantly he recovered himself.
"Well," he said, "we cannot save the Abbey, we cannot save the Holy
Church from this desecration. I have cried 'Pater mi, si possibile est,
transeat a me calix iste!' But now I say 'Verumtamen non sicut ego volo,
sed sicut tu!'"
Then with a curious change of countenance (the difference between a
priest's expression at the altar and in the sacristy when things have
gone crossly) he turned to Rollo.
"Nevertheless," he said, "I do not deny that to you we owe all thanks
and gratitude. Perhaps some day you shall be repaid!"
When Rollo looked round the saturnine priest had disappeared. His host
and he were alone. The Abbot poured out the coffee.
"You will take some of our famous _liqueur_," he said, calmly and
graciously as ever. "The receipt has been in the possession of the Abbey
for well-nigh a thousand years."
It seemed a pity that so many things which had lasted a thousand years
should come to an end on the twentieth day of the month. Meantime,
however, he imitated the nonchalance of the Abbot. The _liqueur_ was not
to be despised.
Rollo held out his glass scarcely knowing what he did. The Abbot poured
into it a generous portion of the precious fluid. It was of the keen
cold green known to painters as viridian--the colour of turnip leaves
with the dew on them.
Don Baltasar drew a glass towards him across the table.
"I am no winebibber," he said, "my vows do not allow of it. But I will
give you a toast, which, if you permit me, I will drink with you in the
pure wine of the flint."
Rollo rose to his feet, and stood looking at the Prior out of his
steadfast blue eyes. They touched their glasses ceremoniously, the
elder, however, avoiding the gaze of the younger.
"May you be rewarded, not according to your successes, but according to
your deserts!" said Don Baltasar.
They drank, and Rollo, astonished by the strange bitter-sweet taste of
the _liqueur_, could only stammer, "I thank you, Prior. Indeed, you are
over kind to me. I only wish I had had--better news--better news to
bring you!"
And then, somehow, it appeared to the young man that a kind of waving
blackness in wreaths and coils like thick smoke began to invade the
room, bellying upwards from the floor and descending from the roof. He
seemed to be sinking back into the arms of the Father-Confessor Anselmo,
who grimaced at him through the empty eye-sockets and toothless jaws of
a skull. There were at least fifty abbots in the room, and a certain hue
of dusky red in the shadows of the window curtains first made him
shudder to the soul and then affected him with terror unutterable.
Finally chaos whirled down darkling and multitudinous, and Rollo knew no
more.
* * * * *
When the young man came to himself he was in altogether another place.
He lay flat on his back, with something hard under his head. His face
seemed cold and wet. The place, as his eyes wandered upward, was full of
shifting shadows and uncertain revealings of cobwebby roof-spaces filled
with machinery, huge wheels and pulleys, ropes and rings and hooks, on
all of which the blown light of candles flickered fitfully.
To one side he could dimly perceive the outlines of what seemed like a
great washerwoman's mangle. He remembered in Falkland town turning old
Betty Drouthy's for hours and hours, every moment expecting that Peggy
Ramsay would come in, basket on arm, the sweetest of Lady Bountifuls,
to visit that venerable humbug, who had all her life lived on too much
charity and who died at last of too much whiskey. Strange, was it not,
that he should think of those far-off days now?
His head, too, was singing and thumping even as poor Betty's must have
done many a morning after Rollo had paid her for the privilege of
turning the mangle, and Peggy Ramsay secretly bestowed half-a-crown out
of her scanty pocket-money upon her, because--well, because she was a
widow and everybody spoke ill of her.
After a while Rollo began to see his surroundings more clearly. Some one
was sitting at a great table covered with black cloth. A huge crucifix
swung over his head--upon it a figure of the Safety of the World,
startlingly realistic.
"Who has brought me here?" he said aloud, uncertain whether or not he
still dreamed. His voice sounded in his own ears harsh and mechanical.
Then Rollo tried to lift a hand in order to wipe his brow. He could move
neither the right nor the left. Both appeared to be fastened firmly to
some band or ring let into a framework of wood.
Then he heard a voice from the figure seated under the black crucifix.
"Bring forward the traitor! He shall learn the great mystery!"
Rollo felt himself slowly lifted on to his feet, or rather the entire
wooden oblong to which his limbs were lashed was erected by unseen
forces. He could discern the breathing of men very close to his ear.
"Listen," said the voice from the tribunal. "You, Rollo Blair, have not
only betrayed the sacred cause of the blessed King Carlos, but, what is
ten thousand times worse, you have been a traitor to Holy Church, in her
battle against much wickedness in high places."
"Who charges me with these things?" cried Rollo, giving up a vain
struggle for freedom.
"Out of your own mouth are you condemned," came the answer. "I who speak
have heard your confession."
Then Rollo knew that Anselmo, the dark confessor, was his accuser and
judge. His executioners he had yet to make acquaintance with. The voice
from the tribunal went on, level and menacing.
"The Abbot of Montblanch may forgive a traitor and he will. He may make
and unmake pacts with a heretic if it please him. As for me, my
conscience shall be clean as were those of blessed San Fernando, of
Gimenez, of holy Torquemada, and of the most religious San Vicente
Ferrar. Die you shall, as every traitor ought. But since I would not
send an immortal soul quick to hell, I offer you this opportunity to be
reconciled to Holy Church. I bid you disavow and utterly abhor all your
treacheries and heretic opinions!"
"I am sorry enough for my sins, God knows, if so be I must die," said
Rollo, making a virtue of necessity; "but I have done no treacheries.
And as for heresy--I have none too much religion of any sort. If you can
help me to more and better, I shall be grateful, without being too
particular as to creed. But my father lived and died a good
Presbyterian, and so, Heaven helping me, shall I!"
The gloomy monk rose at these words, made the gesture of washing the
hands, and then, turning about, kissed the wood of the black crucifix.
"Lay the young man on the rack," he said; "when he is ready to recant
and be reconciled, you know where to find me!"
The two executioners of Anselmo's will were clad in black robes from
head to foot, even their hands being hidden. A tall pointed mask with
eye-holes alone revealed anything human underneath, as, panting with the
exertion, the men raised Rollo to the level of the huge table with the
double rollers beneath. Then he felt his hands and feet one by one
deftly loosened and refastened. The frame was slipped from underneath
him, and Rollo found himself stretched on the rack.
Then calmly seating themselves on a raised shelf close to his head, his
two executioners removed their tall black hoods, apparently in order
that they might wipe their beaded brows. But that they had a further
purpose was immediately apparent.
With infinite surprise Rollo recognised Luis Fernandez and his brother
Tomas. Luis smiled evilly as his ancient enemy rolled his head in his
direction.
"Yes," he said, "I told you my turn would come. I only wish that we had
also the pleasure of the company of your friend the outlaw, Ramon
Garcia. But after all, that great maundering oaf would never have spoilt
my plans but for your cursed interference. Twice, thrice, I had him
trapped as surely as a sheep in a slaughter-pen with the butcher's knife
at his throat. And then you must needs come in my way. Well, every dog
has his day, and now this day I shall square all reckonings."
Fernandez waited for Rollo to reply, but though his Scots instinct was
to give back defiance for defiance, he held his peace. After a pause the
ex-miller of Sarria rolled a cigarette and continued serenely between
the puffs.
"Now listen," he said, "this is my revenge. I have had to pay blood for
it, but now it is mine. For this I sold myself to the monks, truckled to
them, fetched and carried for them. To poor mad Anselmo, with his
antiquated inquisition and holy office, I became a bond-slave. I knew
you would come back hither, and now I can do with you as I will. How
much the Prior knows or suspects of this pleasant subterranean retreat I
am unable to determine. At any rate you cannot expect that he will be
very much delighted with your performances. But, mark you, it is I, and
not he, who will rack your body till you weep and howl for mercy. I have
studied these dainty instruments. I alone put them in order--I, Luis
Fernandez, whose home you broke up, whose house you burnt down to the
bare blackened walls, whom you made desolate of the love of woman----"
"Nay," cried Rollo, hot on a sudden as El Sarria himself--"the love of
Dolores Garcia never was yours--no, nor ever would have been in a
thousand years!"
"It would--I tell you!" responded Fernandez, as fiercely. "I know these
soft, still, easy-tempered women. They cannot do without a shoulder to
lean upon. In time she would have loved me--aye, and better than ever
she did that hulking man-mountain of a Garcia! Do you hear that?"
Rollo heard but did not reply.
"So this is my sweet revenge," Fernandez continued. "The good
Father-Confessor prates of heretics and times for repentance. But he is
mad--mad--mad as Don Quixote, do you understand? I, Luis Fernandez, am
not mad. But if you have any reason for desiring to live--live you
shall--_on my terms_. All I ask is that you answer me one question, or
rather two--as the price of your life."
Only Rollo's eyes looked an interrogation. For the rest he held his
peace and waited.
"Tell me where you have hidden Dolores Garcia--and at what hour, and in
what place Ramon, her husband, lays him down to sleep! If you declare
truthfully these two things, I promise to leave you with three days'
water and provisions, and to provide for your liberation at the end of
that time. If not, I bid you prepare to die, as the men died who have
lain where you lie now!"
Rollo's answer came like the return of a ball at tennis.
"Senor Don Luis," he said, "if I had ten Paradises from which to choose
my eternal pleasures, I would not tell you! If I had as many hells from
which to select for you the tortures of the damned, I would not speak a
word which might aid such a villain in his villany! Let it suffice for
you to know that Dolores Garcia is now where you will never reach her,
and as for her husband--why, you cowardly dog, asleep or awake, sick or
well, you dare not venture within a mile of him! Nay, I doubt greatly if
you dare even face him dead!"
Fernandez rose and motioned his brother to the handle which turned the
great wooden wheel at Rollo's feet. Then the young man lay very still,
listening to the dismal groaning of the ungreased bearings and wondering
almost idly what was about to happen to him.
* * * * *
"God in Heaven, he is here! I tell you I heard him cry! Do you think I
do not know his voice? I will tear up the floor with my fingers, if you
do not make haste!"
It was Concha who spoke or rather shouted these words along the
rabbit-warren of passages which ran this way and that under the Abbey of
Montblanch.
But it had been through Ezquerra and La Giralda that the dread rumour of
danger to Rollo had first come to Sarria. The gipsies have strange ways
of knowledge--mole-runs and rat-holes beneath, birds of the air to carry
the matter above. Some servitor in the Monastery, with a drop of black
blood in him, had heard a word let fall by Don Tomas Fernandez in his
cups. The brothers, so he boasted, would not now have long to wait. The
cherry had dropped into their mouths of its own accord--thus Don Tomas,
half-seas-over, averred--or at least his confessorship would shake the
bough and the fruit would come down with a run. This silly Tomas also
knew who was to have Rollo's horse when all was over--a _tostado_ not
met with every day.
It was enough--more than enough. From Sarria to Espluga in Francoli
Concha raged through the villages like fire through summer grass. The
Abbey--the Friars, the accumulated treasure of centuries, the power of
pit and gallows, of servitude and Holy Office--all these were to end on
the twentieth of the month. Meantime a man was being tortured, done to
death by ghouls--a friend of El Sarria, a friend of Jose Maria--nay, the
saviour of two Queens and the beloved of generals and Prime Ministers!
Would they help to save him? Ah, would they not!
Other rumours came up, thick and rank as toadstools on dead wood. There
was such-an-one of the village of Esplena, such-an-other of Campillo in
the nether Francoli--they refused the Friars this, that, and the other!
Well, did not they enter the Monastery walls, never to be heard of more?
Given the ignorant prejudices of villagers, the hopes of plunder
awakened by a lawless time and an uncertain government, Concha a
prophetess volleying threats and promises--and what wonder is it that in
an hour or two a band of a thousand men was pouring through the gates of
the great Abbey, clambering over the tiles, and with fierce outcries
diving down to the deepest cellars! But from gateway to gateway not a
brother was found. All had been warned in time. All had
departed--whither no man knew.
El Sarria, by his reputation for desperate courage, for a while kept the
mob from deeds of violence and spoliation. But still Rollo was not
found.
Concha, pale of face and with deep circles under her eyes, ran this way
and that, her fingers bleeding and bruised. In her despair she flung
herself upon one obstacle after another, calling for this door and that
to be forced. And strong men followed and did her will without halt or
question.
But of all others it was the cool practical John Mortimer who hit upon
the trail. He remembered how, on their first visit to Montblanch, Rollo
himself, at a certain place near the door of the strong-room in which
the relics were kept, had declared that he heard a sound like a groan.
And there in that very place Concha was driven wild by hearing, she knew
not whence, the voice of her lover. It seemed to her that he called her
by name.
Men ran for crowbars and forehammers. The floor was forced up by mere
strength of arm. The dislodging of a heavy stone gave access to an
underground passage, and men swarmed down one after the other, El
Sarria leading the way, a bar of iron like a weaver's beam in his hand.
The searchers found themselves in a strange place. The vaulting which
they had broken through so rudely, enabled them to scramble downward
amongst great beams and wheels to a raised platform covered with
moth-eaten black. The groaning which Concha had heard was stilled, but
as El Sarria held up his hand for silence they could hear something
scuffling away along the dark passages like rats behind a wainscot.
Without regarding for the moment something vague and indefinite which
lay stretched out on a strange mechanism of wood, El Sarria darted like
a sleuth-hound on the trail up one of the passages into which he had
seen a fugitive disappear. It was no long chase. The pursued doubled to
the right under a low archway. The dim passage opened suddenly upon a
kind of gallery, one side of which was supported on pillars and looked
out upon the great gulf of air and space on the verge of which the
Monastery was built.
The quarry came into view as they reached the sunlight, dazzled and
blinking--a smallish lithe man, running and dodging with terror in his
eyes. But he was no match for his pursuer, and before he had gained the
end of the gallery, the giant's hand closed upon the neck of his enemy.
Then Luis Fernandez, knowing his hour, screamed like a rabbit taken in a
snare.
And through the manifold corridors of the Abbey, and up from
underground, rang the dread cry "Torture!" "They have been torturing him
to death in their accursed dungeons! Kill! Kill! Death to the Friars
wherever found!"
For the blind mouths of down-trodden villages, long dumb, had at last
found a universal tongue.
Ramon Garcia looked once only into the face which glared up at him. In
that glance Luis Fernandez read his fate. Without a word of anger or any
sound save his own footsteps, El Sarria walked to the nearest open
arcade of the gallery and threw his enemy over with one hand, with the
contemptuous gesture of a man who flings carrion to the dogs.
Luis Fernandez fell six hundred feet clear and scarce knew that he had
been hurt.
"God grant us all as merciful a death!" cried Concha; "little did he
deserve it!"
They untied Rollo from the trestle work of the rack which the miller of
Sarria had used to gratify his revenge. At first he could not stand on
his feet. His hands trembled like aspen leaves, and he had perforce to
sit down and lean his head against Concha's shoulder.
"Nay, do not weep, little one," he said, "I am not hurt. You came in
time! But" (here he smiled) "another turn of that wheel and I would have
told them all!"
Meanwhile the hammers were clanging multitudinous. At the sight of
Rollo's pale drawn face the populace went wild. Their mad clamour rose
to heaven. All that night the great Abbey of Montblanch, with its
garniture of stall and chapel, carven reredos and painted picture, went
blazing up to the skies.
At such times men knew no half measures, drew no fine distinctions. For,
especially in Spain, revolutions are never yet effected with a spray of
rose-water. The great Order of our Lady of Montblanch which had endured
a thousand years, perished in one day because of the vengeance of Luis
Fernandez and the madness of the priest Anselmo.
Meanwhile, in the sacristy of a little chapel by the gate, safe from the
spoilers' hand, but lit irregularly by the bursting flames, and to which
the wild cries of the iconoclasts penetrated, Concha sat nursing Rollo.
From time to time he would doze off, awaking with a start to find his
hand clasped in that of his betrothed. Her ear was very near his lips,
and when he wandered a little she soothed him with the tender croonings
of a mother over a sick child, moaning and cooing over him with
inarticulate love, her hands a hundred times lifted to caress him, but
ever fluttering aside lest they should awake the beloved from his
repose.
"Who is it?" he said once, more clearly than usual, yet with remains of
fear in his eyes very pitiful to see.
"It is I--Concha!"
Ah, how soft, how tender at such times a woman's voice can be! The wind
in the barley, the dove calling her mate, the distant murmur of a
sheltered sea--these are not one-half so sweet. The angels' voices about
the throne--they are not so human. Children's voices at play--they have
known no sorrow, no sin. They are not so divine.
"_It is I--Concha!_"
"Ah, beloved, do not leave me--they may come again!"
"_They cannot. They are dead!_"
Keen as the clash of rapiers, triumphant as trumpets sounding the
charge, rang the voice that was erstwhile so soft, so tender.
"All the same, do not leave me! I need you, Concha!"
Who would have believed that this swift and resolute Rollo, this
firebrand adventurer of ours, would have been brought so low--or so
high. But his words were better than all sweet singing in the ears of
Concha Cabezos. She clasped his hand tightly and smiled. She would have
spoken but could not.
"Ah--I knew you would not leave me!" he murmured, turning a little
towards her. "It was foolish to ask!"
Then he was silent for a moment, and as she settled his head more easily
on an extemporised pillow, he glanced towards the closed shutters of the
little sacristy.
"When will the morning come?" he asked wearily.
For answer Concha threw open the outer door and the new-risen sun shone
full upon his pale face.
"_The morning is here!_" she said, with all the glory of it in her
eyes.