IN MADRID
‘Some keepeth silence knowing his time.’
‘WHO travels slowly may arrive too late,’ said the Padre Concha, with a
pessimistic shake of the head, as the carrier’s cart in which he had come
from Toledo drew up in the Plazuela de la Cebada at Madrid. The careful
penury of many years had not, indeed, enabled the old priest to travel by
the quick diligences, which had often passed him on the road with a cloud
of dust and the rattle of six horses. The great journey had been
accomplished in the humbler vehicles plying from town to town, that ran
as often as not by night in order to save the horses.
The priest, like his fellow-travellers, was white with dust. Dust
covered his cloak so that its original hue of rusty black was quite lost.
Dust coated his face and nestled in the deep wrinkles of it. His
eyebrows were lost to sight, and his lashes were like those of a miller.
As he stood in the street the dust arose in whirling columns and
enveloped all who were abroad; for a gale was howling across the
tableland, which the Moors of old had named ‘Majerit’—a draught of wind.
The conductor, who, like a good and jovial conductor, had never refused
an offer of refreshment on the road, was now muddled with drink and the
heat of the sun. He was, in fact, engaged in a warm controversy with a
passenger. So the Padre found his own humble portmanteau, a thing of
cardboard and canvas, and trudged up the Calle de Toledo, bearing the bag
in one hand and his cloak in the other—a lean figure in the sunlight.
Father Concha had been in Madrid before, though he rarely boasted of it,
or indeed of any of his travels.
‘The wise man does not hang his knowledge on a hook,’ he was in the habit
of saying.
That this knowledge was of that useful description which is usually
designated as knowing one’s way about, soon became apparent; for the
dusty traveller passed with unerring steps through the narrower streets
that lie between the Calle de Toledo and the street of Segovia. Here
dwell the humbler citizens of Madrid, persons engaged in the small
commerce of the market-place, for in the Plazuela de la Cebada a hundred
yards away is held the corn market, which, indeed, renders the dust in
this quarter particularly trying to the eyes. Once or twice the priest
was forced to stop at the corner of two streets and there do battle with
the wind.
‘But it is a hurricane,’ he muttered; ‘a hurricane.’
With one hand he held his hat, with the other clung to his cloak and
portmanteau.
‘But it will blow the dust from my poor old capa,’ he added, giving the
cloak an additional shake.
He presently found himself in a street which, if narrower than its
neighbours, smelt less pestiferous. The open drain that ran down the
middle of it pursued its varied course with a quite respectable speed.
In the middle of the street Father Concha paused and looked up, nodding
as if to an old friend at the sight of a dingy piece of palm bound to the
ironwork of a balcony on the second floor.
‘The time to wash off the dust,’ he muttered as he climbed the narrow
stairs, ‘and then to work.’
An hour later he was afoot again in a quarter of the city which was less
known to him—namely, in the Calle Preciados, where he sought a venta more
or less suspected by the police. The wind had risen, and was now blowing
with the force of a hurricane. It came from the north-west with a chill
whistle which bespoke its birthplace among the peaks of the Gaudarramas.
The streets were deserted; the oil lamps swung on their chains at the
street corners, casting weird shadows that swept over the face of the
houses with uncanny irregularity. It was an evening for evil deeds,
except that when Nature is in an ill-humour human nature is mostly cowed,
and those who have bad consciences cannot rid their minds of thoughts of
the hereafter.
The priest found the house he sought, despite the darkness of the street
and the absence of any from whom to elicit information. The venta was on
the ground-floor, and above it towered storey after storey, built with
the quaint fantasy of the middle ages, and surmounted by a deep,
overhanging gabled roof. The house seemed to have two staircases of
stone and two doors—one on each side of the venta. There is a Spanish
proverb which says that the rat which has only one hole is soon caught.
Perhaps the architect remembered this, and had built his house to suit
his tenants. It was on the fifth floor of this tenement that Father
Concha, instructed by Heaven knows what priestly source of information,
looked to meet with Sebastian, the whilom bodyservant of the late Colonel
Monreal of Xeres.
It was known among a certain section of the Royalists that this man had
papers and perchance some information of value to dispose of, and more
than one respectable, black-clad elbow had brushed the greasy walls of
this staircase. Sebastian, it was said, passed his time in drinking and
smoking. The boasted gaieties of Madrid had, it would appear, diminished
to this sordid level of dissipation.
The man was, indeed, thus occupied when the old priest opened the door of
his room.
‘Yes,’ he answered in a thick voice, ‘I am Sebastian of Xeres, and no
other; the man who knows more of the Carlist plots than any other in
Madrid.’
‘Can you read?’
‘No.’
‘Then you know nothing,’ said the Padre. ‘You have, however, a letter in
a pink envelope which a friend of mine desires to possess. It is a
letter of no importance, of no political value—a love letter, in fact.’
‘Ah, yes! Ah, yes! That may be, reverendo. But there are others who
want it—your love letter.’
‘I offer you, on the part of my friend, a hundred pesetas for this
letter.’
The priest’s wrinkled face wore a grim smile. It was so little—a hundred
pesetas, the price of a dinner for two persons at one of the great
restaurants on the Puerta del Sol. But to Father Concha the sum
represented five hundred cups of black coffee denied to himself in the
evening at the café—five hundred packets of cigarettes, so-called of
Havana, unsmoked—two new cassocks in the course of twenty years—a hundred
little gastronomic delights sternly resisted season after season.
‘Not enough, your hundred pesetas, reverendo, not enough,’ laughed the
man. And Concha, who could drive as keen a bargain as any market-woman
of Ronda, knew by the manner of saying it that Sebastian only spoke the
truth when he said that he had other offers.
‘See, reverendo,’ the man went on, leaning across the table and banging a
dirty fist upon it, ‘come to-night at ten o’clock. There are others
coming at the same hour to buy my letter in the pink envelope. We will
have an auction, a little auction, and the letter goes to the highest
bidder. But what does your reverence want with a love letter, eh?’
‘I will come,’ said the Padre, and, turning, he went home to count his
money once more.
There are many living still who remember the great gale of wind which was
now raging, and through which Father Concha struggled back to the Calle
Preciados as the city clocks struck ten. Old men and women still tell
how the theatres were deserted that night and the great cafés wrapt in
darkness. For none dare venture abroad amid such whirl and confusion.
Concha, however, with that lean strength that comes from a life of
abstemiousness and low-living, crept along in the shadow of the houses
and reached his destination unhurt. The tall house in the alley leading
from the Calle Preciados to the Plazuela Santa Maria was dark, as indeed
were most of the streets of Madrid this night. A small moon struggled,
however, through the riven clouds at times, and cast streaks of light
down the narrow streets. Concha caught sight of the form of a man in the
alley before him. The priest carried no weapon, but he did not pause.
At this moment a gleam of light aided him.
‘Señor Conyngham!’ he said. ‘What brings you here?’
And the Englishman turned sharply on his heel.
‘Is that you—Father Concha, of Ronda?’ he asked.
‘No other, my son.’
Standing in the doorway Conyngham held out his hand with that air of
good-fellowship which he had not yet lost amid the more formal Spaniards.
‘Hardly the night for respectable elderly gentlemen of your cloth to be
in the streets,’ he said; whereat Concha, who had a keen appreciation of
such small pleasantries, laughed grimly.
‘And I have not even the excuse of my cloth. I am abroad on worldly
business, and not even my own. I will be honest with you, Señor
Conyngham. I am here to buy that malediction of a letter in a pink
envelope. You remember—in the garden at Ronda, eh?’
‘Yes, I remember; and why do you want that letter?’
‘For the sake of Julia Barenna.’
‘Ah! I want it for the sake of Estella Vincente.’
Concha laughed shortly.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It is only up to the age of twenty-five that men
imagine themselves to be the rulers of the world. But we need not bid
against each other, my son. Perhaps a sight of the letter before I
destroy it would satisfy the señorita.’
‘No, we need not bid against each other,’ began Conyngham; but the priest
dragged him back into the doorway with a quick whisper of ‘Silence!’
Someone was coming down the other stairway of the tall house, with slow
and cautious steps. Conyngham and his companion drew back to the foot of
the stairs and waited. It became evident that he who descended the steps
did so without a light. At the door he seemed to stop, probably making
sure that the narrow alley was deserted. A moment later he hurried past
the door where the two men stood. The moon was almost clear, and by its
light both the watchers recognised Larralde in a flash of thought. The
next instant Esteban Larralde was running for his life with Frederick
Conyngham on his heels.
The lamp at the corner of the Calle Preciados had been shattered against
the wall by a gust of wind, and both men clattered through a slough of
broken glass. Down the whole length of the Preciados but one lamp was
left alight, and the narrow street was littered with tiles and fallen
bricks, for many chimneys had been blown down, and more than one shutter
lay in the roadway, torn from its hinges by the hurricane. It was at the
risk of life that any ventured abroad at this hour and amid the whirl of
falling masonry. Larralde and Conyngham had the Calle Preciados to
themselves—and Larralde cursed his spurs, which rang out at each
footfall, and betrayed his whereabouts.
A dozen times the Spaniard fell, but before his pursuer could reach him,
the same obstacle threw Conyngham to the ground. A dozen times some
falling object crashed to earth on the Spaniard’s heels, and the
Englishman leapt aside to escape the rebound. Larralde was fleet of foot
despite his meagre limbs, and leapt over such obstacles as he could
perceive, with the agility of a monkey. He darted into the lighted
doorway—the entrance to the palatial mansion of an upstart politician.
The large doors were thrown open, and the hall-porter stood in full
livery awaiting the master’s carriage. Larralde was already in the
patio, and Conyngham ran through the marble-paved entrance hall, before
the porter realised what was taking place. There was no second exit as
the fugitive had hoped—so it was round the patio and out again into the
dark street, leaving the hall-porter dumfoundered.
Larralde turned sharply to the right as soon as he gained the Calle
Preciados. It was a mere alley running the whole way round a church—and
here again was solitude, but not silence, for the wind roared among the
chimneys overhead as it roars through a ship’s rigging at sea. The Calle
Preciados again! and a momentary confusion among the tables of a café
that stood upon the pavement, amid upturned chairs and a fallen, flapping
awning. The pace was less killing now, but Larralde still held his
own—one hand clutched over the precious letter regained at last—and
Conyngham was conscious of a sharp pain where the Spaniard’s knife had
touched his lung.
Larralde ran mechanically with open mouth and staring eyes. He never
doubted that death was at his heels, should he fail to distance the
pursuer. For he had recognised Conyngham in the patio of the great
house, and as he ran the vague wonder filled his mind whether the
Englishman carried a knife. What manner of death would it be if that
long arm reached him? Esteban Larralde was afraid. His own life—Julia’s
life—the lives of a whole Carlist section were at stake. The history of
Spain, perhaps of Europe, depended on the swiftness of his foot.
The little crescent moon was shining clearly now between the long-drawn
rifts of the rushing clouds. Larralde turned to the right again, up a
narrow street which seemed to promise a friendly darkness. The ascent
was steep, and the Spaniard gasped for breath as he ran—his legs were
becoming numb. He had never been in this street before, and knew not
whither it led. But it was at all events dark and deserted. Suddenly he
fell upon a heap of bricks and rubbish, a whole stack of chimneys. He
could smell the soot. Conyngham was upon him, touched him, but failed to
get a grip. Larralde was afoot in an instant, and fell heavily down the
far side of the barricade. He gained a few yards again, and, before
Conyngham’s eyes, was suddenly swallowed up in a black mass of falling
masonry. It was more than a chimney this time; nothing less than a whole
house carried bodily to the ground by the fall of the steeple of the
church of Santa Maria del Monte. Conyngham stopped dead, and threw his
arms over his head. The crash was terrific, deafening—and for a few
moments the Englishman was stunned. He opened his eyes and closed them
again, for the dust and powdered mortar whirled round him like smoke.
Almost blinded, he crept back by the way he had come, and the street was
already full of people. In the Calle Preciados he sat down on a
door-step, and there waited until he had gained mastery over his limbs,
which shook still. Presently he made his way back to the house where he
had left Concha.
The man Sebastian had, a week earlier, seen and recognised Conyngham as
the bearer of the letter addressed to Colonel Monreal, and left at that
officer’s lodging in Xeres at the moment of his death in the streets.
Sebastian approached Conyngham, and informed him that he had in his
possession sundry papers belonging to the late Colonel Monreal, which
might be of value to a Royalist. This was, therefore, not the first time
that Conyngham had climbed the narrow stairs of the tall house with two
doors.
He found Concha busying himself by the bedside, where Sebastian lay in
the unconsciousness of deep drink.
‘He has probably been drugged,’ said the priest. ‘Or, he may be dying.
What is more important to us is, that the letter is not here. I have
searched. Larralde escaped you?’
‘Yes; and of course has the letter.’
‘Of course, amigo.’
The priest looked at the prostrate man with a face of profound contempt,
and, shrugging his shoulders, went towards the door.
‘Come,’ he said, ‘I must return to Toledo and Julia. It is thither that
this Larralde always returns, and she, poor woman, believes in him. Ah,
my friend’—he paused and shook his long finger at Conyngham. ‘When a
woman believes in a man she makes him or mars him; there is no medium.’