The Velvet Glove Part 38

"I will go on to Torre Garda on foot," answered Marcos speaking in French so that the driver should not hear and understand. "There is a way over the mountains which is known to two or three only."

"Uncle Ramon is at Torre Garda?" asked Juanita in the same curt, quick way.

"Yes."

"Then I will go with you," she said with her hand already on the door.

"It is sixteen miles," said Marcos, "over the high mountains. The last part can only be done by daylight. I shall be in the mountains all night."

Juanita had opened the door. She stood on the step looking up at him as he sat on the tall black horse,

"If you will take me," she said in French, "I will come with you."

Sor Teresa was silent still. She had not spoken since Marcos had pulled up his sweating horse in the lamplight. What a simple world this would be if more of its women knew when to hold their tongues!

Marcos, fresh from a bed of sickness was not fit to undertake this journey. He must already be tired out; for she knew that it was Marcos who had followed their carriage from Pampeluna. She guessed that finding no troops where he expected to find them he had ridden ahead to discover the cause of it and had pa.s.sed unheard through the Carlist ambush and back again through the zone of fire. That Juanita could accomplish the journey on foot to Torre Garda seemed doubtful. The country was unsafe; the snows had hardly melted. It was madness for a wounded man and a girl to attempt to reach Torre Garda through a pa.s.s held by the enemy. But Sor Teresa said nothing.

Marcos sat motionless in the saddle. His face was above the radius of the reversed carriage-lamp, while Juanita standing on the dusty road in her nun's dress looking up at him, was close to the glaring light. It is to be presumed that he was watching her descend from the carriage and then turn to shut the door on Sor Teresa. By his silence, Marcos seemed to consent to this arrangement.

He came forward into the light now. In his hand he held a paper which he was unfolding. Juanita recognised the letter she had written to him in the drawing-room at Torre Garda. He tore the blank sheet off and folding the letter closely, replaced it in his pocket. Then he laid the blank sheet on the dusty splash-board of the carriage and wrote a few words in pencil.

"You must get back to Pampeluna," he said to the driver in that tone of command which is the only survival of feudal days now left in Europe--and even the modern Spaniards are losing it--"at any cost--you understand. If you meet the reinforcements on the road give this note to the commanding officer. Take no denial; give it into his own hand. If you meet no troops go straight to the house of the commandant at Pampeluna and give the letter to him. You will see that it is done," he said in a lower voice, turning to Sor Teresa.

The man protested that nothing short of death would prevent his carrying out the instructions.

"It will be worth your while," said Marcos. "It will be remembered afterwards."

He paused deep in thought. There were a hundred things to be considered at that moment; quickly and carefully. For he was going into the Valley of the Wolf, cut off from all the world by two armies watching each other with a deadly hatred.

The quiet voice of Sor Teresa broke the silence, softly taking its place in his thoughts. It seemed that the Sarrion brain had the power--the secret of so much success in this world--of thrusting forth a sure and steady hand to grasp the heart of a question and tear it from the tangle of side-issues among which the majority of men and women are condemned to flounder.

"Where is Evasio Mon?" she asked.

Marcos answered with a low, contented laugh.

"He is trapped in the valley," he said in French. "I have seen to that."

The firing had ceased as suddenly as it had commenced, and a silence only broken by the voice of the river, now hung over the valley.

"Are you ready?" Sor Teresa asked her driver.

"Yes, Excellency."

"Then go."

She may have nodded a farewell to Marcos and Juanita. But that they could not see in the blackness of the night. She certainly gave them no spoken salutation. The carriage moved away at a sharp trot, leaving Marcos and Juanita alone.

"We can ride some distance and must ford the river higher up," said Marcos at once. He did not seem to want any explanation. The excitement of the moment seemed to have wiped out the events of the last few months like writing off a slate. Juanita was young again, ready to throw herself headlong into an adventure in the mountains with Marcos such as they had had together many times during the holidays. But this was better than the dangers of mere snow and ice. For Juanita had tasted that highest of emotions, the excitement of battle. She had heard that which some men having once heard cannot live without, the siren song of a bullet.

"Are we going nearer to the Carlists?" she asked hurriedly. There was fighting blood in her veins, and the tones of her voice told clearly enough that it was astir at this moment.

"Yes," answered Marcos. "We must pa.s.s underneath them; for the ford is there. We must be quite noiseless. We must not even whisper."

He edged his horse towards one of the rough stones laid on the outer edge of the road to mark its limit at night.

"I can only give you one hand," he said. "Can you get up from this stone?"

"Behind you?" asked Juanita; "as we used to ride when I was--little?"

For Marcos had, like most Spaniards, grown from boyhood to manhood in the saddle, and Juanita had no fear of horses. She clambered to the broad back of the Moor and settled herself there, sitting pillion fas.h.i.+on and holding herself in position with both hands round Marcos.

"If he trots, I fall off," she said, with an eager laugh.

They soon quitted the road and began to descend the steep slope towards the river by a narrow path only made visible by the open s.p.a.ce in the high brushwood. It was the way down to a ford leading to a cottage by courtesy called a farm, though the cultivated land was scarcely an acre in extent, reclaimed from the river-bed.

The ground was soft and mossy and the roar of the river covered the tread of the careful horse. In a few minutes they reached the water's edge, and after a moment's hesitation the Moor stepped boldly in. On the other bank Marcos whispered to Juanita to drop to the ground.

"The cottage is here," he said. "I shall leave the horse in their shed."

He descended from the saddle and they stood for a moment side by side.

"Let us wait a few moments, the moon is rising," said Marcos. "Perhaps the Carlists have been here."

As he spoke the sky grew lighter. In a minute or two a waning moon looked out over the sharp outline of hill and flooded the valley with a reddish light.

"It is all right," he said; nothing is disturbed here. They are asleep in the cottage; the noise of the river must have drowned the firing. They are friends of mine; they will give us some food for to-morrow morning and another dress for you. You cannot go in that."

"Oh!" laughed Juanita, "I have taken the veil. It is done now and cannot be undone."

She raised her hands to the wings of her spreading cap as if to defend it against all comers. And Marcos, turning, suddenly threw his uninjured arm round her, imprisoning her struggling arms. He held her thus a prisoner while with his injured hand he found the strings of the cap. In a moment the starched linen fluttered out, fell into the river, and was carried swirling away.

Juanita was still laughing, but Marcos did not answer to her gaiety. She recollected at that instant having once threatened to dress as a nun in order to alarm Marcos, and Sarrion's grave remark that it would of a certainty frighten him.

They were silent for a moment. Then Juanita spoke with a sort of forced lightness.

"You may have only one arm," she said, "but it is an astonis.h.i.+ngly strong one!"

And she looked at him surrept.i.tiously beneath her lashes as she stood with her hands on her hair.

CHAPTER XXVII

IN THE CLOUDS Marcos tied his horse to a tree and led the way towards the cottage. It seemed to be innocent of bars and bolts. The ford, known to so few, and the evil name of the Wolf, served instead. The door opened at a push, and Marcos went in. A wood-fire smouldered on an open hearth, while the acrid smoke half-filled the room, blackened by the fumes of peat and charcoal.

Marcos stood on the threshold and called the owner by name. There was a shuffling sound in an inner room and the sc.r.a.ping of a match. A minute later a door was opened and an old woman stood in the aperture, fully dressed and carrying a lamp above her head.