THE DAWN OF PEACE
‘Quien no ama, no vive.’
THE fall of Morella had proved to be, as many anticipated, the knell of
the Carlist cause. Cabrera, that great general and consummate leader,
followed Don Carlos, who had months earlier fled to France. General
Espartero—a man made and strengthened by circumstances—was now at the
height of his fame, and for the moment peace seemed to be assured to
Spain. It was now a struggle between Espartero and Queen Christina. But
with these matters the people of Spain had little to do. Such warfare of
the council-chamber and the boudoir is carried on quietly, and the sound
of it rarely reaches the ear, and never the heart, of the masses.
Politics, indeed, had been the daily fare of the Spaniards for so long
that their palates were now prepared to accept any sop so long as it was
flavoured with peace. Aragon was devastated, and the northern provinces
had neither seed nor labourers for the coming autumn. The peasants who,
having lost faith in Don Carlos, rallied round Cabrera, now saw
themselves abandoned by their worshipped leader, and turned hopelessly
enough homewards. Thus gradually the country relapsed into quiet, and
empty garners compelled many to lay aside the bayonet and take up the
spade who, having tasted the thrill of battle, had no longer any taste
for the ways of peace.
Frederick Conyngham was brought into sudden prominence by the part he
played in the disturbance at Toledo—which disturbance proved, as history
tells, to be a forerunner of the great revolution a year later in Madrid.
Promotion was at this time rapid, and the Englishman made many strides in
a few months. Jealousy was so rife among the Spanish leaders, Christinos
distrusted so thoroughly the reformed Carlists, that one who was outside
these petty considerations received from both sides many honours on the
sole recommendation of his neutrality.
‘And besides,’ said Father Concha, sitting in the sunlight on his church
steps at Ronda, reading to the barber, and the shoemaker, and other of
his parishioners, the latest newspaper, ‘and besides—he is clever.’
He paused, slowly taking a pinch of snuff.
‘Where the river is deepest it makes least noise,’ he added.
The barber wagged his head after the manner of one who will never admit
that he does not understand an allusion. And before any could speak the
clatter of horses in the narrow street diverted attention. Concha rose
to his feet.
‘Ah!’ he said, and went forward to meet Conyngham, who was riding with
Concepçion at his side.
‘So you have come, my son,’ he said, shaking hands. He looked up into
the Englishman’s face, which was burnt brown by service under a merciless
sun. Conyngham looked lean and strong, but his eyes had no rest in them.
This was not a man who had all he wanted.
‘Are you come to Ronda, or are you passing through?’ asked the priest.
‘To Ronda. As I passed the Casa Barenna I made inquiries. The ladies
are in the town, it appears.’
‘Yes; they are with Estella in the house you know—unless you have
forgotten it.’
‘No,’ answered Conyngham getting out of the saddle. ‘No; I have
forgotten nothing.’
Concepçion came forward and led the horse away.
‘I will walk to the Casa Vincente. Have you the time to accompany me?’
said Conyngham.
‘I have always time—for my neighbour’s business,’ replied Concha. And
they set off together.
‘You walk stiffly,’ said Concha. ‘Have you ridden far?’
‘From Osuna—forty miles since daybreak.’
‘You are in a hurry.’
‘Yes, I am in a hurry.’
Without further comment he extracted from inside his smart tunic a
letter—the famous letter in a pink envelope—which he handed to Concha.
‘Yes,’ said the priest, turning it over. ‘You and I first saw this in
the Hotel de la Marina at Algeciras, when we were fools not to throw it
into the nearest brazier. We should have saved a good man’s life, my
friend.’
He handed the letter back, and thoughtfully dusted his cassock where it
was worn and shiny with constant dusting, so that the snuff had nought to
cling to.
‘And you have got it—at last. Holy saints—these Englishmen! Do you
always get what you want, my son?’
‘Not always,’ replied Conyngham, with an uneasy laugh. ‘But I should be
a fool not to try.’
‘Assuredly,’ said Concha, ‘assuredly. And you have come to Ronda—to
try?’
‘Yes.’
They walked on in silence, on the shady side of the street, and presently
passed and saluted a priest—one of Concha’s colleagues in this city of
the South.
‘There walks a tragedy,’ said Concha, in his curt way. ‘Inside every
cassock there walks a tragedy—or a villain.’
After a pause it was Concha who again broke the silence. Conyngham
seemed to be occupied with his own thoughts.
‘And Larralde—?’ said the priest.
‘I come from him—from Barcelona,’ answered Conyngham, ‘where he is in
safety. Catalonia is full of such as he. Sir John Pleydell, before
leaving Spain, bought this letter for two hundred pounds—a few months
ago—when I was a poor man and could not offer a price for it. But
Larralde disappeared when the plot failed, and I have only found him
lately in Barcelona.’
‘In Barcelona?’ echoed Concha.
‘Yes; where he can take a passage to Cuba, and where he awaits Julia
Barenna.’
‘Ah!’ said Concha, ‘so he also is faithful—because life is not long, my
son. That is the only reason. How wise was the great God when He made a
human life short! ‘
‘I have a letter,’ continued Conyngham, ‘from Larralde to the Señorita
Barenna.’
‘So you parted friends in Barcelona—after all—when his knife has been
between your shoulders?’
‘Yes.’
‘God bless you, my son!’ said the priest, in Latin, with his careless,
hurried gesture of the Cross.
After they had walked a few paces he spoke again.
‘I shall go to Barcelona with her,’ he said, ‘and marry her to this man.
When one has no affairs of one’s own there always remain—for old women
and priests—the affairs of one’s neighbour. Tell me—’ he paused and
looked fiercely at him under shaggy brows—‘tell me why you came to
Spain.’
‘You want to know who and what I am—before we reach the Calle Mayor?’
said Conyngham.
‘I know what you are, _amigo mio_, better than yourself, perhaps.’
As they walked through the narrow streets Conyngham told his simple
history, dwelling more particularly on the circumstances preceding his
departure from England, and Concha listened with no further sign of
interest than a grimace or a dry smile here and there.
‘The mill gains by going, and not by standing still,’ he said, and added,
after a pause, ‘But it is always a mistake to grind another’s wheat for
nothing.’
They were now approaching the old house in the Calle Mayor, and Conyngham
lapsed into a silence which his companion respected. They passed under
the great doorway into the patio, which was quiet and shady at this
afternoon hour. The servants, of whom there are a multitude in all great
Spanish houses, had apparently retired to the seclusion of their own
quarters. One person alone was discernible amid the orange trees and in
the neighbourhood of the murmuring fountain. She was asleep in a
rocking-chair, with a newspaper on her lap. She preferred the patio to
the garden, which was too quiet for one of her temperament. In the patio
she found herself better placed to exchange a word with those engaged in
the business of the house, to learn, in fact, from the servants the
latest gossip, to ask futile questions of them, and to sit in that
idleness which will not allow others to be employed. In a word, this was
the Señora Barenna, and Concha, seeing her, stood for a moment in
hesitation. Then, with a signal to Conyngham, he crept noiselessly
across the tessellated pavement to the shadow of the staircase. They
passed up the broad steps without sound and without awaking the sleeping
lady. In the gallery above, the priest paused and looked down into the
courtyard, his grim face twisted in a queer smile. Then, at the woman
sitting there—at life and all its illusions, perhaps—he shrugged his
shoulders and passed on.
In the drawing-room they found Julia, who leapt to her feet and hurried
across the floor when she saw Conyngham. She stood looking at him
breathlessly, her whole history written in her eyes.
‘Yes,’ she whispered, as if he had called her. ‘Yes—what is it? Have
you come to tell me—something?’
‘I have come to give you a letter, señorita,’ he answered, handing her
Larralde’s missive. She held out her hand, and never took her eyes from
his face.
Concha walked to the window—the window whence the Alcalde of Ronda had
seen Conyngham hand Julia Barenna another letter. The old priest stood
looking down into the garden, where, amid the feathery foliage of the
pepper trees and the bamboos, he could perceive the shadow of a black
dress. Conyngham also turned away, and thus the two men who held this
woman’s happiness in the hollow of their hands stood listening to the
crisp rattle of the paper as she tore the envelope and unfolded her
lover’s letter. A great happiness and a great sorrow are alike
impossible of realisation. We only perceive their extent when their
importance has begun to wane.
Julia Barenna read the letter through to the end, and it is possible (for
women are blind in such matters) failed to perceive the selfishness in
every line of it. Then, with the message of happiness in her hand, she
returned to the chair she had just quitted, with a vague wonder in her
mind, and the very human doubt that accompanies all possession, as to
whether the price paid has not been too high.
Concha was the first to move. He turned and crossed the room towards
Conyngham.
‘I see,’ he said, ‘Estella in the garden.’
And they passed out of the room together, leaving Julia Barenna alone
with her thoughts. On the broad stone balcony Concha paused.
‘I will stay here,’ he said. He looked over the balustrade. Señora
Barenna was still asleep.
‘Do not awake her,’ he whispered. ‘Let all sleeping things sleep.’
Conyngham passed down the stairs noiselessly, and through the doorway
into the garden.
‘And at the end—the Gloria is chanted,’ said Concha, watching him go.
The scent of the violets greeted Conyngham as he went forward beneath the
trees planted there in the Moslems’ day. The running water murmured
sleepily as it hurried in its narrow channel towards the outlet through
the grey wall, whence it leapt four hundred feet into the Tajo below.
Estella was seated in the shade of a gnarled fig tree, where tables and
chairs indicated the Spanish habit of an out-of-door existence. She rose
as he came towards her, and met his eyes gravely. A gleam of sun
glancing through the leaves fell on her golden hair, half hidden by the
mantilla, and showed that she was pale with some fear or desire.
‘Señorita,’ he said, ‘I have brought you the letter.’ He held it out,
and she took it, turning over the worn envelope absent-mindedly.
‘I have not read it myself, and am permitted to give it to you on one
condition—namely, that you destroy it as soon as you have read it.’
She looked at it again.
‘It contains the lives of many men—their lives and the happiness of those
connected with them,’ said Conyngham. ‘That is what you hold in your
hand, señorita—as well as my life and happiness.’
She raised her dark eyes to his for a moment, and their tenderness was
not of earth or of this world at all. Then she tore the envelope and its
contents slowly into a hundred pieces, and dropped the fluttering papers
into the stream pacing in its marble bed towards the Tajo and the
oblivion of the sea.
‘There—I have destroyed the letter,’ she said, with a thoughtful little
smile. Then, looking up, she met his eyes.
‘I did not want it. I am glad you gave it to me. It will make a
difference to our lives. Though—I never wanted it.’
Then she came slowly towards him.
* * * * *
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