The Velvet Glove

by Henry Seton Merriman

  CHAPTER XI

  THE ROYAL ADVENTUREThere are halting-places in the lives of most men when for a period theindividual desire must give place to some great national need. We eachlive our little story through, but at times we find ourselves draggedfrom the narrow way into the great high road, where the history of theworld blunders to an end which cannot even yet be dimly discerned.

  When Marcos rode into Saragossa after nightfall he found the streetsfilled by groups of anxious men. The nerves of civilisation were at agreat tension at this time. Sedan was past. Paris was already besieged.All the French-speaking people thought that the end of the world mustneeds be at hand. The Pope had been deprived of his temporal power. Thegreat foundations of the world seemed to tremble beneath the onward treadof inexorable history.

  In Spain itself, no man knew what might happen next. There seemed nodepth to which the land of ancient glory might not be doomed to descend.Cuba was in wild revolt. Thousands of lives had been uselessly thrownaway. Already the pride of the proudest nation since Rome, had beenhumbled by the just interference of the United States. A kingdom withouta king, Spain had hawked her crown round Europe. For a throne, as forhumbler posts, it is easy enough to find second-rate men who have nospecial groove, nor any capacity to delve one, but the first-rate menare, one discovers, nearly always occupied elsewhere. They are neverwaiting for something to turn up.

  Spain, with her three crowns in her hand, had called at every Court inEurope. She had thrown two nations into the greatest war of civilisedages. She was still looking for a king, still calling hopelessly to thesecond-rate royalties. Leopold of Hohenzollern would have accepted hadnot France arisen to object, only to receive a sound thrashing for herpains. Thus, for the second time in the world's history, Spain was themeans of bringing a French empire to the dust.

  Ferdinand of Portugal, a cousin to the Queen of England, himself aCoburg, finally declined the honour. And Spain could not wait. There wasa certain picturesqueness in Prim, the usual ornamental General throughwhose hands Spain has passed and repassed during the last century. He wasa hard man, and the men of Spain, unlike the French, understand amartinet. But Spain could not wait. She must have a king; for the regencywas wearisome. It was weary of itself, like an old man ready to die.There was no money in the public coffers. The Cortes was a house ofwords. Here eloquence reigned supreme; and eloquence never yet made anempire.

  Half a dozen different parties made speeches at each other, but Spain,owing to a blessed immunity from the cheap newspaper, was spared thesespeeches. She was told that Castelar was the eloquent orator of the age.

  She looked at Castelar, who was a fat little man with a big moustache anda small forehead, and she said: "Let us have a king!"

  Prim was better. He was a man at all events, and not a word-spinner. Hewas from Cataluna, where they make hard men with clear heads. And he knewhis own mind. And he also said: "Let us have a king."

  One cried for Don Carlos, and another for Espartero. Cataluna said therewas no living with Andalusia. Aragon wanted her own king and wishedValencia would go hang. Navarre was all for Don Carlos.

  And when Marcos de Sarrion rode into Saragossa they were calling in thestreets that only a republic was possible now.

  He went home to that grim palace between the Cathedral and the Ebro andfound his father gone. A brief note told him that Sarrion had gone toMadrid where a meeting of notables had been hastily summoned--and thathe, Marcos, must hurry back to Torre Garda--that the Carlists were up fortheir king.

  Marcos returned the same night to Pampeluna, and the next day rode toTorre Garda by the high road that winds up the valley of the Wolf. In hisown small kingdom be soon made his iron hand felt. And these people whowould pay no taxes to king or regent remained quiet amid the anarchy thatreigned all over Spain.

  Thus a week passed and rumours of strange doings at Madrid reached thequiet valley. All over the country, bands of malcontents callingthemselves Carlists had risen in obedience to the voice of Don Carlos'grandson, the son of that Don Juan who had renounced a hopeless cause. Tomeet a soldier with his cap worn right side foremost was for the timeunusual in the cities of the north. For the army no longer knew a master;and the Spanish soldier has a naive and simple way of notifying thiscondition by wearing the peak of his cap behind.

  Marcos heard nothing of his father at Madrid, but surmised that there thetalkers still held sway. The postal service of Spain is still almostmediaeval. In the principal cities the post-offices are to-day onlyopened for business during two hours of the twenty-four. In the year ofthe Franco-Prussian war there was no postal service at all to thedisaffected parts of the northern provinces.

  At the end of a week, Marcos rose at three o'clock and rode sixty milesbefore sunset to keep his word with Juanita. He did not trust therailway, which indeed was in constant danger of being cut by Carlist orRoyalist, but performed the distance by road where he met many friendsfrom Navarre and one or two from the valley of the Wolf. A thousandreports, a hundred rumours and lies innumerable, were on the roads also,traveling hither and thither over Spain. And Marshall Prim seemed to bethe favoured god of the moment.

  Marcos was at his post outside the convent school wall at seven o'clock.He heard the clock of San Fernando strike eight. In these Southernlatitudes the evenings are not much longer in summer than in winter. Itwas quite dark by eight o'clock when Marcos rode away. He was not givento a display of emotion. He was an eminently practical man. Juanita wouldhave come if she could, he reflected. Why could she not keep herappointment?

  He rode to the main gate and asked if he could see Sor Teresa--known inthe world as Dolores Sarrion--for the monastic life was forbidden by lawat this time in Spain, and this was no nunnery; though, as in all suchplaces, certain mediaeval follies were carefully fostered.

  "Sor Teresa is not here," was the reply through the grating.

  "Then where is she?"

  But there was no reply to this plain question.

  "Has she gone to Pampeluna?"

  The little shutter behind the grating was softly closed. And Marcosturned his horse's head with a quiet smile. His face, beneath the shadowof his wide hat, was still and hard. He had ridden sixty miles sincemorning, but he sat upright in his saddle. This was a man, as Juanita hadobserved, not to say things, but to do them.

  It was not difficult for him to find out during the next few weeks thatJuanita had been sent to Pampeluna, whither also Sor Teresa had beencommanded to go. Saragossa has a playful way of sacking religious houses,which the older-world city of Navarre would never permit. In Pampelunathe religious habit is still respected, and a friar may carry his shavenhead high in the windy streets.

  Pampeluna, it was known, might at any moment be in danger of attack, butnot of bombardment by the Carlists, who had many friends within thewalls. Juanita was as safe perhaps in Pampeluna as anywhere in NorthernSpain. So Marcos went back to Torre Garda and held his valley in a quietgrip. The harvests were gathered in, and starvation during the comingwinter was, at all events, avoided.

  The first snow came and still Marcos had no news of Juanita. He knew,however, that both she and Sor Teresa were still at Pampeluna in thegreat yellow house in the Calle de la Dormitaleria, nearly opposite theCathedral gate, from whence there is constant noiseless traffic ofsisters and novices hurrying across, with lowered eyes, to the sanctuary,or back to their duties, with the hush of prayer still upon them.

  In November Marcos received a letter from his father, sent by hand allthe way from the capital. Prim had re-established order, he wrote. Therewas hope of a settlement of political differences. A king had been found,and if he accepted the crown all might yet go well with Spain.

  A week later came the news that Amedeo of Savoy, the younger son of thatbrave old Victor Emmanuel, who faced the curse of a pope, had beendeclared King of Spain.

  Amedeo of Savoy, Duke of Aosta, was not a second-rate man. He was brave,honest, and a gentleman--qualities to which the throne of Spain had beenstranger while t
he Bourbons sat there.

  Sarrion summoned Marcos to Madrid to meet the new king. The wise men ofall parties knew that this was the best solution of the hopelessdifficulties into which Spain had been thrust by the Bourbons and thetonguesters. A few honest politicians here and there set aside their owninterests in the interest of the country, which action is worthrecording--for its rarity. But the country in general was gloomy andindifferent. Spain is slow to learn, while France is too quick; and herknowledge is always superficial.

  "Give us at all events a Spaniard," muttered those who had cried "Downwith liberty," when that arch-scoundrel, Fernando the Desired, returnedto his own.

  "Give us money and we will give you Don Carlos," returned the cassockedcanvassers of that monarch in a whisper.

  It was evening when Marcos arrived at Madrid, and the station, like allthe trains, was crowded. All who could were traveling to Madrid to meetthe king--for one reason or another.

  Marcos was surprised to see his father on the platform among thosewaiting for the train from the capitals of the North.

  "Come," said Sarrion, "let us go out by the side door; I have thecarriage there, the streets are impassable. No one knows where to turn.There is no head in Spain now; they assassinated him last night."

  "Whom?" asked Marcos.

  "Prim. They shot him in his carriage, like a dog in a kennel--five ofthem--with guns. One has no pride in being a Spaniard now."

  Marcos followed his father through the crowd without replying.

  There seemed nothing, indeed, to be said; nothing to be added to thesimple observation that it was a humiliation for a man to have to admitin these days that he was a Spaniard.

  "He was a Catalonian to the last," said Sarrion, when they were seated intheir carnage. "He walked dying up his own stairs, so that his wife mightbe spared the sight of seeing him carried in. Stubborn and brave! One ofthe best men we have seen."

  "And the king?"

  "The king lands at Carthagena to-day--lands with his life in his hand. Hecarries it in his hand wherever he goes, day and night, in Spain, he andhis wife. Without Prim he cannot hope to stand. But he will try. We mustdo what we can."

  The carriage was making its careful way across the Puerta del Sol, whichhad been cleared by grape-shot more than once in Sarrion's recollection.It looked now as if only artillery could set order there.

  "Viva el Rey! viva Don Carlos!" a loafer shouted, and waved his hat inSarrion's grim and smiling face.

  "I do not understand," he said to Marcos, as they passed on, "why thegood God gives the Bourbons so many chances."

  "I cannot understand why the Bourbons never take them," answered Marcos.For he was not a pushing man, but one of those patient waiters onopportunity who appear at length quietly at the top, and look down withthoughtful eyes at those who struggle below. The sweat and strife of somecareers must tarnish the brightest lustre.

  Father and son drove together to the apartment in a street high above thetown, near the church of San Jose where the Sarrions lived when inMadrid, and there Sarrion gave Marcos further details of that strangeadventure which Amedeo of Spain was about to begin.

  In return Marcos vouchsafed a brief account of affairs in the valley ofthe Wolf. He never had much to say and even in these stirring times toldof a fine harvest; of that brilliant weather which marked the year of theNapoleonic downfall.

  "And Juanita?" inquired Sarrion at length.

  "Is at Pampeluna. They cannot get her away from there without my knowingit. She is well ... and happy."

  "You have not written to her?"

  "No," answered Marcos.

  "We must remember," said Sarrion, with a nod of approval, "that we aredealing with the cleverest men in the world, and the greediest----"

  "And the hardest pressed," added Marcos.

  "But you have not written to her?"

  "No."

  "Nor heard from her?"

  "I had a note from her at Saragossa, before they moved her to Pampeluna,"answered Marcos with a smile. "It was rather badly spelt."

  "And...?" asked Sarrion.

  Marcos did not reply to this comprehensive interrogation.

  "You have come to some decision?" Sarrion suggested.

  "I have come to the usual decision that you are quite right in yoursuspicions. They want that money, and they intend to get it by forcingher into religion and inducing her to sign the usual testament made bynuns, conferring all their earthly goods upon the order into which theyare admitted."

  Then Sarrion went back to his original question.

  "And...?"

  "As soon as we see signs of their being likely to succeed I propose tosee Juanita again."

  "You can do it despite them?"

  "Yes, I can do it."

  "And...?"

  "I shall explain the position to her--that her bad fortune has given herchoice of two evils."

  "That is one way of putting it."

  "It is the only honest way."

  Sarrion shrugged his shoulders.

  "My friend," he said, "I do not think that love and honesty are much insympathy."