The Velvet Glove

by Henry Seton Merriman

  CHAPTER XVII

  AT THE INN OF THE TWO TREESAt dawn the next morning, Marcos and Sarrion rode out of the city towardsAlagon by the great high road many inches deep in dust which has alwaysbeen the main artery of the capital of Aragon.

  The pace was leisurely; for the carriage they were going to meet had beentimed to leave Alagon fifteen miles away at four o'clock. There was butone road. They could scarcely miss it.

  It was seven o'clock when they halted at a roadside inn. Sarrion quittedthe saddle and went indoors to order coffee while Marcos sat on his tallblack horse scanning the road in front of him. The valley of the Ebro isflat here, with bare, brown hills rising on either side like a giganticmud-fence. Strings of carts were making their way towards Saragossa. Faraway, Marcos could perceive a recurrent break in the dusty line. A cartor carriage traveling at a greater than the ordinary market pace wasmaking its laborious way past the heavier traffic. It came at lengthwithin clearer sight; a carriage all white with dust and a pair ofskinny, Aragonese horses such as may be hired on the road.

  The driver seemed to recognise Marcos, for he smiled and raised his handto his hat as he drew up at the inn, a recognised halting-place beforethe last stage of the journey.

  Marcos caught sight of a white cap inside the carriage. He leant down onhis horse's neck and perceived Sor Teresa, who had not seen him lookingout of the carriage window towards the inn. He rode round to the otherdoor and dropped out of the saddle. Then he turned the handle and openedthe door. But Sor Teresa had no intention of descending. She leantforward to say as much and recognised her nephew.

  "You!" she exclaimed. And her pale face flushed suddenly. She had been anun for many years and was no doubt a conscientious one, but she hadnever yet learnt to remove all her love from earth to fix it on heaven.

  "Yes."

  "How did you know that I should be here?"

  "I guessed it," answered Marcos, who was always practical. "You will likesome coffee. It is ordered. Come in and warm yourself while the horsesrest."

  He led the way towards the inn.

  "What did you say?" he asked, turning on the threshold; for he had heardher mutter something.

  "I said, 'Thank God'!"

  "What for?"

  "For your brains, my dear," she answered. "And your strong heart."

  Sarrion was making up the fire when they entered the room--lithe andyoung in his riding costume--and he turned, smiling, to meet her. Shekissed him gravely. There was always something unexplained between thesetwo, something to be said which made them both silent.

  "There is the coffee," said Marcos, "on the table. We have no time tospare."

  "Marcos means," explained Sarrion significantly, "that we have no time towaste."

  "I think he is right," said Sor Teresa.

  "Then if that is the case, let us at least speak plainly," said Sarrion,"with a due regard," he allowed, with a shrug of the shoulder, "to yourvows and your position, and all that. We must not embroil you with yourconfessor; nor Juanita with hers."

  "You need not think of that so far as Juanita is concerned," said SorTeresa. "It is I who have chosen her confessor."

  "Where is she?" asked Marcos.

  "She is here, in Saragossa!"

  "Why?" asked the man of few words.

  "I don't know."

  "Where is she in Saragossa?"

  "I don't know. I have not seen her for a fortnight. I only learnt byaccident yesterday afternoon that she had been brought to Saragossa withsome other girls who have been postulants for six months and are about tobecome novices."

  "But Juanita is not a postulant," said Sarrion, with a laugh.

  "She may have been told to consider herself one."

  "But no one has a right to do that," said Sarrion pleasantly.

  "No."

  "And even if she were a novice she could draw back."

  "There are some Orders," replied Sor Teresa, slowly stirring her coffee,"which make it a matter of pride never to lose a novice."

  "Excuse my pertinacity," said Sarrion. "I know that you prefergeneralities to anything of a personal nature, but does Juanita wish togo into religion?"

  "As much ..." She paused.

  "Or as little," suggested Marcos, who was looking out of the window.

  "As many who have entered that life." Sor Teresa completed the sentencewithout noticing Marcos' interruption.

  "And these periods of probation," said Sarrion, reverting to thosegeneralities which form the language of the cloister. "May they bedispensed with?"

  "Anything can be dispensed with--by a dispensation," was the reply.

  Sarrion laughed, and with an easy tact changed the subject which couldscarcely be a pleasant one between a professed nun and two men known allover Spain as leaders in that party which was erroneously calledAnti-Clerical, because it held that the Church should not have thedominant voice in politics.

  "Have you seen our friend, Evasio Mon, lately?" he asked.

  "Yes--he is on the road behind me."

  "Behind you? I understood that he left Pampeluna yesterday forSaragossa," said Sarrion.

  "Yes--but I heard at Alagon that he was delayed on the road at theCastejon side of Alagon--an accident to his carriage--a broken wheel."

  "Ah!" said Sarrion sympathetically. He glanced at Marcos who was lookingout of the window with a thoughtful smile.

  "You yourself have had a hurried journey from Pampeluna," said Sarrion tohis sister. "I hear the railway line is broken by the Carlists."

  "The damage is being repaired," replied Sor Teresa. "My journey was not apleasant one, but that is of no importance since I have arrived."

  "Why did you come?" asked Marcos, bluntly. He was a plain-dealer inthought and word. If Sor Teresa should embroil herself with herconfessor, as Sarrion had gracefully put it, by answering his questions,that was her affair.

  "I came to prevent, if I could, a great mistake."

  "You mean that Juanita is quite unfitted for the life into which, for thesake of his money, she is being forced or tricked."

  "Force has failed," replied Sor Teresa. "Juanita has spirit. She laughedin the face of force and refused absolutely."

  "And?" muttered Sarrion.

  "One may presume that subtler means were used," answered the nun.

  "You mean trickery," suggested Marcos. "You mean that her own words weretwisted into another meaning; that she was committed or convicted out ofher own lips; that she was brought to Saragossa by trickery, and that bytrickery she will be dragged unwittingly into religion--you need notshake your head. I am saying nothing against the Church. I am a goodCatholic. It is a question of politics. And in politics you must fightwith the weapon that the adversary selects. We are only politicians ...my dear aunt."

  "Is that all?" said Sor Teresa, looking at him with her deep eyes whichhad seen the world before they saw heaven. Things seen leave their tracebehind the eyes.

  Marcos made no answer, but turned away and looked out of the windowagain.

  "It is a question of mutual accommodation," put in Sarrion in his lightervoice. "Sometimes the Church makes use of politics. And at another timeit is politics making use of the Church. And each sullies the other oneach occasion. We shall not let Juanita go into religion. The Church maywant her and may think that it is for her happiness, but we also have ouropinion on that point; we also ..."

  He broke off with a laugh and threw out his hands in a gesture ofdeprecation; for Sor Teresa had placed her two hands over that part ofher cap which concealed her ears.

  "I can hear nothing," she said. "I can hear nothing."

  She removed her hands and sat sipping her coffee in silence. Marcos wasstanding near the window. He could see the white road stretched outacross the plain for miles.

  "What did you intend to do on your arrival in Saragossa if you had notmet us?" he asked.

  "I should have gone to the Casa Sarrion to warn your father or yourselfthat Juanita had been taken from my control and that I did not k
now whereshe was."

  "And then?" inquired Marcos.

  "And then I should have gone to Torrero," she answered with a smile athis persistence; "where I intend to go now. Then I shall learn at whathour and in which chapel the ceremony is to take place to-day."

  "The ceremony in which Juanita has been ordered to take part as aspectator only?"

  Sor Toresa nodded her head.

  "It cannot well take place without you?"

  "No," she answered. "Neither can it take place without Evasio Mon. One ofthe novices is his niece, and, where possible, the near relations arenecessarily present."

  "Yes--I know," said Marcos. He had apparently studied the subjectsomewhat carefully. "And Evasio Mon is delayed on the road, which givesus a little more time to mature our plans."

  Sor Teresa said nothing, but glanced towards Marcos who was watching theroad.

  "You need not be anxious, Dolores," said Sarrion, cheerfully. "Betweenpoliticians these matters settle themselves quietly enough in Spain."

  "I ceased to be anxious," replied Sor Teresa, "from the moment that I sawMarcos in the inn yard."

  It was Marcos who spoke next, after a short silence.

  "Your horses are ready, if you are rested," he said. "We shall return toSaragossa by a shorter route."

  "And I again assure you," added Sor Teresa's brother, "that there is noneed for anxiety. We shall arrange this matter quite quietly with EvasioMon. We shall take Juanita away from your school to-day. Our cousinPeligros is already at the Casa Sarrion waiting her arrival. Marcos hasarranged these matters."

  He made a gesture of the hand, presumably symbolic of Marcos' plans, forit was short and sharp.

  "There will be nothing for you to do," said Marcos from the window."Waste no time. I see a carriage some miles away."

  So Sor Teresa went on her journey. Her dealings with men had beenconfined to members of that sex who went about their purpose in anindirect and roundabout way, speaking in generalities, attentive toinsignificant detail, possessing that smaller sense of proportion whichis a feminine failing and which must always make a tangled jumble ofthose public affairs in which women and priests may play a part. She hadcome into actual touch in this little room of an obscure inn with a forcewhich seemed to walk calmly on its way over the petty tyranny that ruledher daily life, which seemed to fear no man, neither God as representedby man, but shaped for itself a Deity, large-minded and manly; Whoconsidered the broad inner purpose rather than petty detail of outwardobservance.

  The Sarrions returned to their gloomy house on the Paseo del Ebro andthere awaited the information which Sor Teresa alone could give them.They had not waited long before the driver of her carriage, who hadseemed to recognise Marcos on the road from Alagon, brought a note:

  "It is at number five, Calle de la Merced, but they will await, E. M."

  "And the other carriage that is on the road?" Marcos asked the man. "Thecarriage which brings the caballero--has it arrived in Saragossa?"

  "Not yet," answered the driver. "I have heard from one who passed them onthe road that they had a second mishap just after leaving the inn of TheTwo Trees, where their Excellencies took coffee--a little mishap thisone, which will only delay them an hour or less. He has no luck, thatcaballero."

  The man looked quite gravely at Marcos, who returned the glance assolemnly. For they were as brothers, these two, sons of that same mother,Nature, with whom they loved to deal, fighting her strong winds, herheat, her cold, her dust and rivers, reading her thousand and one secretsof the clouds, of night and dawn, which townsmen never know and nevereven suspect. They had a silent contempt for the small subtleties of aman's mind, and were half ashamed of the business on which they were nowengaged.

  As the man withdrew in obedience to Marcos' salutation, "Go with God,"the clock struck twelve.

  "Come," said Marcos to his father, "we must go to number five, Calle dela Merced. Do you know the house?"

  "Yes; it is one of the many in Saragossa that stand empty, or aresupposed to stand empty. It is an old religious house which was sacked inthe disturbances of Christina's reign."

  He walked to the window as he spoke and looked out.

  The house had been thrown open for the first time for many years, andthey now occupied one of the larger rooms looking across the garden tothe Ebro.

  "Ah! you have ordered the carriage," he said, seeing the broughamstanding at the door, and the rusty gates thrown open, giving egress tothe Paseo del Ebro.

  "Yes," answered Marcos in an odd and restrained voice. "To bring Juanitaback."