The Velvet Glove

by Henry Seton Merriman

  CHAPTER XIXCOUSIN PELIGROSThe novitiate dress had been dispensed with, and Juanita wore her usualschool-dress of black, with a black mantilla. They therefore walked thelength of the Calle de la Merced without attracting undue attention.

  Juanita's cheeks were flushed and her eyes bright with excitement. Sheslipped her hand within Sarrion's arm and gave it a little squeeze ofaffection.

  "How kind of you to come," she said. "I knew I could trust you. I wasnever afraid."

  Sarrion smiled a little dryly and glanced towards Marcos, who had met andovercome 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 takethe 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--fromall the world! Is it not so?"

  "Yes," answered Marcos, turning to look at her as she moved, her feethardly 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 tostand her full height and to draw her slim bodice in at the waist. "I aman inch taller than Milagros, but Milagros is getting most preposterouslyfat. The girls tell her that she will soon be like Sor Dorothea who is sohuge that she has to be hauled up from her knees like a sack that hasbeen saying its prayers. That stupid Milagros cries when they say it."

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

  "Heaven forbid!" was the reply. "She says she is going to marry asoldier. I can't think why. She says she likes the drums. But I told hershe could buy a drum and hire a man to hit it. She is very rich, youknow. 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 ourprayers at school. I am sure she ought to reflect before she marries asoldier. I wouldn't if I were she. Oh! but I forgot...."

  She paused and turning to Marcos she gripped his arm with a confidentialemphasis. "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 wasalways the dread that they would make me a nun despite us all. You don'tknow what it is to feel helpless and to have a dread; to wake up with itat night and wish you were dead and all the bother was over."

  "It is all over now, without being dead," Marcos assured her, with hisslow smile.

  "Quite sure?"

  "Quite sure," answered Marcos.

  "And I shall never go back to school again. And they have no power overme; neither Sor Teresa, nor Sor Dorothea, nor the dear mother. We alwayscall her the 'dear mother,' you know, because we have to; but we hateher. 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?" askedJuanita, turning on Marcos with a sudden shrewd gravity.

  "No."

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

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

  They had reached the corner of the street now, and the carriage wasapproaching them. It was one of the heavy carriages used only on stateoccasions which had stood idle for many years in the stables of thePalacio Sarrion. The horses were from Torre Garda and the men in theirquiet 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 closedthe door touched his hat, not to the Sarrions but to her; and shereturned 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 thoughtfuleyes. She asked no more questions and they drove to the Palacio Sarrionin silence.

  There they found Cousin Peligros awaiting them.

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

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

  At the same time she made a little gesture with outspread palms, andfolded her white hands complacently on her lap as if to indicate thatsociety was not left comfortless--that she was still there. From herinferiors she looked for the utmost deference. Her white hands had neverdone an hour's work. She was ignorant and idle; but she was a lady and aSarrion.

  Cousin Peligros lived in a little apartment in Madrid, which she fondlyimagined to be the hub of the social universe.

  "They all come," she said, "to consult the Senorita de Sarrion uponpoints of etiquette."

  And she patted the air condescendingly with her left hand. There are somepeople who seem to be created by a far-seeing Providence as a solemnwarning.

  "Cousin Peligros," said Juanita one day, after listening respectfully toa lecture on the care of the hands, "lives in a little field of her own."

  "Like a scarecrow," added Marcos, the taciturn.

  And this was the lady who awaited them at the Palacio Sarrion. She hadbeen summoned from Madrid by Sarrion, who paid the expenses of thejourney; no small item, by the way. For Cousin Peligros, like many peoplewho live at the expense of others, sought to mitigate the bitterness ofthe bread of charity by spreading it very thickly with other people'sbutter.

  She did not come down to the door to meet them when the carriageclattered over the cobble-stones of the echoing patio.

  Such a proceeding might have lowered her dignity in the eyes of theservants, who, to do them justice, saw right through Cousin Peligrosinto the vacuum that lay behind her. She sat in state in the greatdrawing-room with her hands folded on her lap and placidly arranged herproposed mode of greeting the newcomers. She had been informed thatSarrion had found it necessary to take Juanita de Mogente away from theconvent school and to assume the cares of that guardianship which hadalways been an understood obligation mutually binding between himselfand Francisco de Mogente.

  Cousin Peligros was therefore keenly alive to the fact, that Juanitarequired at this critical moment of her life a good and abiding example.Hers also was the blessed knowledge that no one in all Spain was betterfitted to offer such an example than the Senorita Peligros de Sarrion.

  She therefore sat in her best black silk dress in an attitude subtlycombining, with a kind tolerance for all who were so unfortunate as notto be Sarrions, a complacent determination to do her duty.

  It is to be regretted that she was for a time left sitting thus, forPerro was in the hall, and his greeting of Juanita had to be acknowledgedwith several violent hugs, which resulted in Juanita's mantilla gettingmixed up with Perro's collar. Then there were the pictures and the armourto be inspected on the stairs. For Juanita had never seen the palace withits shutters open.

  "Are they all Sarrions?" she exclaimed. "Oh mi alma! What a fiercecompany. That old gentleman with a spike on top of his hat is a crusaderI suppose. And there is a helmet hanging on the wall beneath theportrait, with
a great dent in it. But I expect he hit him back again.Don't you think so, Uncle Ramon, if he was a Sarrion?"

  "I dare say he did," answered the Count.

  "I wish I was a Sarrion," said Juanita, looking up at the armour with alight in her eyes.

  "You are one," replied Sarrion, gravely.

  She stopped and glanced back over her shoulder at him. Marcos was someway behind, and took no part in the conversation.

  "So I am," she said. "I forgot."

  And with a little sigh, as of a realised responsibility, she continuedher way up the wide stairs. The sight of Cousin Peligros, upright on achair, dispelled Juanita's momentary gravity, however.

  "Oh, Cousin Peligros," she cried, running to her and taking both herhands. "Just think! I have left school. No more punishments--no moregrammar--no more arithmetic!"

  Cousin Peligros had risen and endeavoured to maintain that dignity whichshe felt to be so beneficial an example to the world. But Juanitaemphasised each item of her late education with a jerk which graduallyderanged Cousin Peligros' prim mantilla. Then she danced her round animpalpable mulberry bush until the poor lady was breathless.

  "No more Primes at six o'clock in the morning," concluded Juanita,suddenly allowing Cousin Peligros to sit again. "Do you ever go to Primesat six o'clock in the morning, Cousin Peligros?"

  "No," was the grave answer. "Such things are not expected of ladies."

  "How thoughtful of Heaven!" exclaimed Juanita, with a light laugh. "ThenI do not mind being grownup--and putting up my hair--if you will lend metwo hairpins."

  She fell on Cousin Peligros' mantilla and extracted two hairpins from itdespite the resistance of the soft white hands. Then she twisted up theheavy plait that hung to her waist, threw back her mantilla and stoodlaughing before the old lady.

  "There--I am grown-up! I am more grown-up than you, you know; forI am..."

  She broke off, and turning to Sarrion, asked,

  "Does she know ... does she know the joke?"

  "No," said Sarrion.

  "We are married," she said, standing squarely in front of CousinPeligros.

  "Married ..." echoed the disciple of etiquette, faintly. "Married--towhom?"

  "Marcos and I."

  But Cousin Peligros only gasped and covered her face with her hands.

  Marcos came into the room at this moment and scarcely looked at CousinPeligros. Those white hands played so large a part in her small dailylife that they were always in evidence, and it did not seem out of placethat they should cover her foolish face.

  "I found all your clothes ready packed at the school," he said,addressing Juanita. "Sor Teresa brought them with her from Pampeluna. Youwill find them in your room."

  "Oh ..." groaned Cousin Peligros.

  "What is it?" inquired Marcos practically. "What is the matter with her?"

  "She has just been told that we are married," explained Juanita, airily."And I think you shocked her by mentioning my clothes. You shouldn't doit, Marcos."

  And she went and stood by Cousin Peligros with her hand upon her shoulderas if to protect her. She shook her head gravely at Marcos.

  Cousin Peligros rose rigidly and walked towards the door.

  "I will go," she said. "I will see that your room is in order. I havenever before been made an object of ridicule in a gentleman's house."

  "But we may surely laugh and be happy in a gentleman's house, may wenot?" cried Juanita, running after her, and throwing one arm round herrather unbending and capacious waist. "You are an old dear, and you mustnot be so solemn about it. Marcos and I are only married for fun, youknow."

  And the door closed behind them, shutting off Juanita's volubleexplanations.

  "You see," said Sarrion, after a pause. "She is happy enough."

  "Now," answered Marcos. "But she may find out some day that she is not."

  Juanita came back before long and found Sarrion alone.

  "Where is Marcos?" she asked.

  "He is taking a siesta," answered Sarrion.

  "Like a poor man."

  "Yes, like a poor man. He was not in bed all last night. You had anarrower escape of being made a nun than you suspect."

  Juanita's face fell. She went to the window and stood there looking out.

  "When are we going to Torre Garda?" she asked, after a long silence. "Ihate towns ... and people. I want to smell the pines ... and thebracken."