The Velvet Glove Part 16

"It will be cold at Pampeluna!" muttered the General from within the hood of his military cloak. "I pity you! yes, good-bye; close the door."

The station was full of soldiers, and their high peaked caps were at every window of the trains. It was barely yet daylight when the Sarrions alighted at the fortified station in the plain below Pampeluna.

The city stands upon a hill which falls steeply on the northeast side to the bed of the river Arga, a green-coloured stream deep enough to give additional strength to the walls which tower above like a cliff.

Pampeluna is rightly reckoned to be the strongest city in Europe. It is approached from the southwest by a table-land, across which run the high roads from Madrid and the French frontier.

The station lies in the plain across which the railway meanders like a stream. Both bridges across the Arga are commanded, as is the railway station, by the guns of the city. Every approach is covered by artillery.

The sun was rising as the Sarrions' carriage slowly climbed the incline and clanked across the double drawbridges into the city. In the Plaza de la Const.i.tucion, the centre of the town, troops of hopeful dogs followed each other from dust heap to dust heap, but seemed to find little of succulence, whilst what they did find appeared to bring on a sudden and violent indisposition. Perro gazed at them sadly from the carriage window remembering perhaps his own dust heap days.

The Sarrions had no house in Pampeluna. Unlike the majority of the Navarrese n.o.bles they lived in their country house which was only twenty miles away. They made use of the hotel in the corner of the Plaza de la Const.i.tucion when business or war happened to call them to Pampeluna.

They went there now and took their morning coffee.

"Two months," said Sarrion, warming himself at the stove in their simply furnished sitting-room. "Two months, they have given that scoundrel Pacheco to make his preparations."

"Yes--"

"So that Juanita must make her choice at once."

"They go to vespers in the Cathedral," said Marcos. "It is dusk by that time. They cross the Calle de la Dormitaleria and go through the two patios into the cloisters and enter the Cathedral by the cloister door.

If Juanita could forget something and go back for it, I could see her for a few minutes in the cloisters which are always deserted in winter."

"Yes," said Sarrion, "but how?"

"Sor Teresa must do it," said Marcos. "You must see her. They cannot prevent you from seeing your own sister."

"But will she do it?"

"Yes," answered Marcos without any hesitation at all.

"I shall try to see Juanita also," said Sarrion, throwing his cloak round his shoulders twice so that its bright lining was seen at the back, hanging from the left shoulder. "You stay here."

He went out into the cold air. Pampeluna lies fourteen hundred feet above the sea-level, and is subject to great falls of snow in its brief winter season.

Sarrion walked to the Calle de la Dormitaleria, a little street running parallel with the city walls, eastward from the Cathedral gates. There he learnt that Sor Teresa was out. The lay-sister feared that he could not see Juanita de Mogente. She was in cla.s.s: it was against the rules.

Sarrion insisted. The lay-sister went to make inquiries. It was not in her province. But she knew the rules. She did not return and in her place came Father Muro, the spiritual adviser of the school; Juanita's own confessor. He was a stout man whose face would have been pleasant had it followed the lines that Nature had laid down. But there was something amiss with Father Muro--the usual lack of naturalness in those who lead a life that is against Nature.

Father Muro was afraid that Sarrion could not see Juanita. It was not within his province, but he knew that it was against the rules. Then he remembered that he had seen a letter addressed to the Count de Sarrion.

It was lying on the table at the refectory door, where letters intended for the post were usually placed. It was doubtless from Juanita. He would fetch it.

Sarrion took the letter and read it, with a pleasant smile on his face, while Father Muro watched him with those eyes that seemed to want something they could not have.

"Yes," said the Count at length, "it is from Juanita de Mogente."

He folded the paper and placed it in his pocket.

"Did you know the contents of this letter, my father?" he asked.

"No, my son. Why should I?"

"Why, indeed?"

And Sarrion pa.s.sed out, while Father Muro held the door open rather obsequiously.

CHAPTER XIII

THE GRIP OF THE VELVET GLOVE On returning to the hotel in the corner of the Plaza de la Const.i.tution, Sarrion threw down on the table before Marcos the note that Father Muro had given him. He made no comment.

"My dear uncle," the letter ran, "I am writing to advise you of my decision to go into religion. I am prompted to communicate this to you without delay by the remembrance of your many kindnesses to me. You will, I know, agree with me that this step can only be for my happiness in this world and the next. Your grateful niece.--JUANITA DE MOGENTE."

Marcos read the letter carefully, and then seeking in his pocket, produced the note that Juanita had pa.s.sed to him through the hole in the wall of the convent school at Saragossa. It seemed that he carried with him always the sc.r.a.p of paper that she had hidden within her dress until the moment that she gave it to him.

He laid the two letters side by side and compared them.

"The writing is the writing of Juanita," he said; "but the words are not.

They are spelt correctly!"

He folded the letters again, with his determined smile, and placed them in his pocket. Sarrion, smoking a cigarette by the stove, glanced at his son and knew that Juanita's fate was fixed. For good or ill, for happiness or misery, she was destined to marry Marcos de Sarrion if the whole church of Rome should rise up and curse his soul and hers for the deed.

Sarrion appeared to have no suggestions to make. He continued to smoke reflectively while he warmed himself at the stove. He was wise enough to perceive that his must now be the secondary part. To possess power and to resist the temptation to use it, is the task of kings. To quietly relinquish the tiller of a younger life is a lesson that gray hairs have to learn.

"I think," said Marcos at length, "that we must see Leon. He is her guardian. We will give him a last chance."

"Will you warn him?" inquired Sarrion.

"Yes," replied Marcos, rising. "He may be here in Pampeluna. I think it likely that he is. They are hard pressed. If they get the dispensation from Rome they will hurry events. They will try to rush Juanita into religion at once. And Leon's presence is indispensable. They are probably ready and only awaiting the permission of the Vatican. They are all here in Pampeluna, which is better than Saragossa for such work--better than any city in Spain. They probably have Leon waiting here to give his formal consent when required."

"Then let us go and find out," said Sarrion.

The Plaza de la Const.i.tucion is the centre of the town, and beneath its colonnade are the offices of the countless diligences that connect the smaller towns of Navarre with the capital, which continued to run even in time of war to such places as Irun, Jaca, and even Estella, where the Carlist cause is openly espoused. Marcos made the round of the diligence offices. He had, it seemed, a hundred friends among the thick-set muleteers in breeches, stockings, and spotless s.h.i.+rt, who looked at him with keen, dust-laden eyes from beneath the shade of their great berets.

The drivers of the diligences, which were now arriving from the mountain villages, paused in their work of unloading their vehicles to give him the latest news.

They were soft spoken persons with a repressed manner, which characterises both men and women of their ancient race, and they spoke to him in Basque. Some freed their hands from the folds of the long blanket, which each wore according to his fancy, to shake hands with him; others nodded curtly. Men from the valley of Ebro muttered "Buenas"--the curt salutation of Aragon the taciturn.

Marcos seemed to know them by their baptismal names. He even knew their horses by name also, and asked after each, while Perro, affable alike with rich and poor, exchanged the time of day with traveled dogs, all lean and dusty from the road, who limped on sore feet and probably told him of the snow while they lay in the sun and licked their paws. Like his master, he was not proud, but took a wide view of life, so that all varieties of it came within his field of vision.

Then master and dog took a walk down the Calle del Pozo Blanco, where the saddle and harness-makers congregate; where muleteers must come to buy those gay saddle-bags which so soon lose their bright colour in the glaring sun; where the guardias civiles step in to buy their paste and pipe-clay; where the great man's groom may chat with the teamster from the mountain while both are waiting on the saddler's needle.

Finally Marcos pa.s.sed through the wide Calle de San Ignacio to the drawbridges across the double fosse, where the rope-makers are always at work, walking backwards with an ever decreasing bundle of hemp at their waists and one eye c.o.c.ked upwards towards the roadway so that they know all who come and go better even than the sentry at the gate. For the sentries are changed three or four times a day, while the rope-maker goes on forever.

Just beyond the second line of fortifications is a halting-place by a low wall where the country women (whom one may meet riding in the plain--dignified, cloaked and hooded figures, startlingly suggestive of a sacred picture) on mule or donkey, stop to descend from their perch between the saddle-bags or panniers. It is a sort of al fresco cloakroom where these ladies repair the ravages of wind or storm, where they a.s.semble in the evening to pack their purchases on their beasts of burden, and finally climb to the top of all themselves. For it is not etiquette to ride in or out of the gates upon one's wares; and a breach of this unwritten law would immediately arouse the suspicion of the courteous toll-officer, who fingers delicately with a tobacco-stained hand the bundles and baskets submitted to his inspection.

Here also Marcos had friends, and was able to tell the latest news from Cuba, where some had husband, son or lover; a so-called volunteer to put down the hopeless rebellion, attracted to a miserable death, by the forty-pound bounty paid by Government. There were old women who chaffed him, and young ones with fine-cut cla.s.sic features and crinkled hair, who lay in wait for a glance from his grave eyes.

"It is a pity there are not more like you, Senor Conde," said one old peasant; "for it is you that keeps the men from fighting among themselves and makes them tend the sheep or take in the crops. Carlist or Royalist, the land comes before either, say I."