The Velvet Glove Part 26

There Mon turned to look at Juanita and from her to Marcos. He was distressed for them.

"It is illegal," he repeated, gently. "Without a dispensation."

And by way of reply Marcos handed him a second paper, bearing at its foot the oval seal of the Vatican. It was the usual dispensation, easy enough to procure, for the marriage of an orphan under age.

"I am glad," said Mon, and he tried to look it.

Sarrion went on into the narrow corridor. The friar was sitting on a worm-eaten bench there, leaning back against the wall, his hand over his eyes.

"He is hurt," explained Marcos, simply. "He tried to stop us."

Mon made no comment but accompanied them to the door, which he closed behind them, and then returned to the chapel, reflecting perhaps upon how small an incident the history of nations may turn. For if the friar had been able to withstand the Sarrions--if there had been a grating to the small door in the Calle de la Merced--Don Carlos de Borbone might have worn the three crowns of Spain.

CHAPTER XIX COUSIN PELIGROS The novitiate dress had been dispensed with, and Juanita wore her usual school-dress of black, with a black mantilla. They therefore walked the length of the Calle de la Merced without attracting undue attention.

Juanita's cheeks were flushed and her eyes bright with excitement. She slipped her hand within Sarrion's arm and gave it a little squeeze of affection.

"How kind of you to come," she said. "I knew I could trust you. I was never afraid."

Sarrion smiled a little dryly and glanced towards Marcos, who had met and overcome all the difficulties, and who now walked quietly by his side, concealing the bloodstains on the handkerchief covering his lips.

Then Juanita let go Sarrion's left arm and ran round behind him to take the other, while with her right hand she took Marcos' left arm.

"There," she cried, with a laugh. "Now I am safe from all the world--from all the world! Is it not so?"

"Yes," answered Marcos, turning to look at her as she moved, her feet hardly touching the ground, between them.

"Why do you look at me like that?" she asked.

"I think you have grown."

"I know I have," she answered gravely. And she stopped in the street to stand her full height and to draw her slim bodice in at the waist. "I am an inch taller than Milagros, but Milagros is getting most preposterously fat. The girls tell her that she will soon be like Sor Dorothea who is so huge that she has to be hauled up from her knees like a sack that has been saying its prayers. That stupid Milagros cries when they say it."

"Is Milagros going to be a nun?" asked Sarrion, absent-mindedly. He was thinking of something else and looked at Juanita with a speculative glance. She was so gay and inconsequent.

"Heaven forbid!" was the reply. "She says she is going to marry a soldier. I can't think why. She says she likes the drums. But I told her she could buy a drum and hire a man to hit it. She is very rich, you know. It is not worth marrying for that, is it?"

"No," answered Marcos, to whom the question had been addressed.

"She may get tired of drums, you know. Just as we get tired saying our prayers at school. I am sure she ought to reflect before she marries a soldier. I wouldn't if I were she. Oh! but I forgot...."

She paused and turning to Marcos she gripped his arm with a confidential emphasis. "Do you know, Marcos, I keep on forgetting that we are married.

You don't mind, do you? I am not a bit sorry, you know. I am so glad, because it gets me away from school. And I hate school. And there was always the dread that they would make me a nun despite us all. You don't know what it is to feel helpless and to have a dread; to wake up with it at night and wish you were dead and all the bother was over."

"It is all over now, without being dead," Marcos a.s.sured her, with his slow smile.

"Quite sure?"

"Quite sure," answered Marcos.

"And I shall never go back to school again. And they have no power over me; neither Sor Teresa, nor Sor Dorothea, nor the dear mother. We always call her the 'dear mother,' you know, because we have to; but we hate her. But that is all over now, is it not?"

"Yes," answered Marcos.

"Then I am glad I married you," said Juanita, with conviction.

"And I need not be afraid of Senor Mon, with his gentle smile?" asked Juanita, turning on Marcos with a sudden shrewd gravity.

"No."

She gave a great sigh of relief and shook back her mantilla. Then she laughed and turned to Sarrion.

"He always says 'yes' or 'no'--and only that," she remarked confidentially to him. "But somehow it seems enough."

They had reached the corner of the street now, and the carriage was approaching them. It was one of the heavy carriages used only on state occasions which had stood idle for many years in the stables of the Palacio Sarrion. The horses were from Torre Garda and the men in their quiet liveries greeted her with country frankness.

"It is one of the grand carriages," said Juanita.

"Yes."

"Why?" she asked.

"To take you home," replied Sarrion.

Juanita got into the carriage and sat down in silence. The man who closed the door touched his hat, not to the Sarrions but to her; and she returned the salutation with a friendly smile.

"Where are we going?" she asked after a pause.

"To the Casa Sarrion," was the reply.

"Is it open, after all these years?"

"Yes," answered Sarrion.

"But why?"

"For you," answered Sarrion.

Juanita turned and looked out of the window, with bright and thoughtful eyes. She asked no more questions and they drove to the Palacio Sarrion in silence.

There they found Cousin Peligros awaiting them.

Cousin Peligros was a Sarrion and seemed in some indefinite way to consider that in so being and so existing she placed the world under an obligation. That she considered the world bound, in return for the honour she conferred upon it, to support her in comfort and deference was a patent fact hardly worth putting into words.

"The old families," she was in the habit of saying with a sigh, "are dying out."