The Velvet Glove

by Henry Seton Merriman

  CHAPTER XXIII

  KIND INQUIRIESFor the next fortnight Juanita remained in supreme command at TorreGarda, exercising that rule which she said she had acquired at theconvent school. It had, in reality, come to her straight from Heaven, asit comes to all women. Is it not part of the gentler soul to care for thehelpless and the sick? Just as it is in a man's heart to fight the worldfor a woman's sake.

  Marcos made a quick recovery. His broken bones knit together like thesnapped branch of a young tree. His cuts and bruises healed themselvesunaided.

  "He has no nerves," said Juanita. "You should see a nun when she is ill!St. Luke and all the saints have their hands full, I can tell you."

  With returning health came energy. Indeed, the patient had never lost hisgrip of the world. Many from the valley came to make inquiry. Some left amessage of condolence. Some departed with a grunt, indicative ofsatisfaction. A few of the more cultivated gave their names to theservant as they drank a glass of red wine in the kitchen.

  "Say it was Pedro from the mill."

  "Tell him that Three Fingered Thomas passed by," muttered another,grudgingly.

  "It is I, so-called Short Knife, who came to ask," explained a third,tapping the sheath of his baptismal weapon.

  "How far have you come?" asked Juanita, who found these gentlemenentertaining.

  "Seventeen miles from the mountain," was the reply.

  "All your friends are calling to inquire after your health," said Juanitato Marcos. "They are famous brigands, and make one think fondly of theGuardia Civile. There are not many razors in the valley, and I am surethere is no soap."

  "They are honest enough, though their appearance may be disquieting."

  "Oh! I am not afraid of them," answered Juanita, with a shrewd and mysticsmile. "It is Cousin Peligros who fears them. She scolded me for speakingto one of them on the verandah. It undermines the pedestal upon which alady should always stand. Am I on a pedestal, Marcos?"

  She looked back at him over her shoulder, through the fold of hermantilla. It was an opportunity, perhaps, which a skillful lover wouldhave seized. Marcos was silent for a moment. Then he spoke in a repressedvoice.

  "If they come again," he said, "I should like to see them."

  But Juanita had already put into the apothecary's lips a command that novisitors should be admitted.

  She kept this up for some days, but was at length forced to give way.Marcos was so obviously on the high road to recovery. There was nosuggestion of an after-effect of the slight concussion of the brain whichhad rendered him insensible.

  It was Short Knife who first gained admittance to the sick-room. He wasquite a simple person, smelling of sheep, and endowed with a tact whichis as common among the peasantry as amid the great. There was no sign ofembarrassment in his manner, and he omitted to remove his beret from hisclose-cropped head until he saw Juanita whom he saluted curtly, replacinghis cap with a calm unconsciousness before he nodded to Marcos.

  "It was you I heard singing the Basque songs as I climbed the hill," hesaid, addressing Juanita first with the instinct of a gentleman. "Youspeak Basque?"

  "I understand it, at all events, though I cannot speak it as well asMarcos."

  "Oh, he!" said the man, glancing towards the bed. "He is one of us--oneof us. Do you know the song that the women of the valley sing to theirbabies? I cannot sing to you for I have no voice except for the goats.They are not particular, the goats--they like music. They stand round meand listen. But if you are passing in the mountain my wife will sing itto you--she knows it well. We have many round the table--God be thanked.It makes them sleep when they are contrary. It tells how easy it is tokill a Frenchman."

  Then, having observed the conventionalities, he turned eagerly to Marcos.

  Juanita listened to them for a short time while they spoke together inthe Basque tongue. Then she went to the balcony and stood there, leaningher arms on the iron rail, looking out over the valley with thoughtfuleyes. She had seen clearly a hundred devices to relieve her of her watchat the bedside. Marcos made excuses for her to absent herself. He foundoccupations for her elsewhere. With his returning strength came anxietythat she should lead her own life--apart from him.

  "You need not try to get rid of me," she said to him one day. "And I donot want to go for a walk with Cousin Peligros. She thinks only of hershoes and her clothes while she walks. I would go for a walk with Perroif I went with any one. He has a better understanding of what God madethe world for than Cousin Peligros. But I am not going to walk with anyone, thank you."

  Nevertheless she absented herself. And Marcos' attempts to finddiversions for her, ceased with a suspicious suddenness. She fell intothe habit of using the drawing-room which was immediately beneath thesick-room, and spent much of her time at the piano there.

  "It keeps Marcos quiet," she explained airily to Sarrion, and vouchsafednothing further on the subject.

  Chiefly because the music of Handel and Beethoven alone had beenencouraged by her professors, Juanita had learnt with some enthusiasm thefolk songs of the Basques, considered worthy only of the attention of thepeople. She had a pretty voice, round and young with strange low notes init that seemed to belong not to her but to some woman who had yet to liveand suffer, or, perhaps, be happy as some few are in this uneven world.She had caught, moreover, the trick of slurring from one note to theother, which must assuredly have been left in Spain by the Moors. Itcomes from the Far East. It was probably characteristic of those songsthat they could not sing by the waters of Babylon, when they hanged theirharps upon a tree in the strange land. For it gives to songs, sad or gay,the minor, low clear note of exile. It rings out unexpectedly in strangeplaces. The boatmen of the Malabar Coast face the surf singing no otherthan the refrain that the Basque women murmur over the cradle. "It keepsMarcos quiet," said Juanita.

  "I suppose," she suggested to Marcos one day when she returned to hisroom and found him quiet, "that when you are well enough to ride you willbegin your journeys up and down the valley."

  "Yes."

  "And your endless watch over the Carlists?"

  "They are making good use of their time, I hear," replied Marcos, withthe grave appreciation of a good fighter for a worthy foe.

  Juanita remembered this now as she stood on the balcony. For he of theShort Knife and Marcos were talking politics--those rough and readypolitics of the valley of the Wolf, which dealt but little in words andvery considerably in deeds of a bloody nature.

  She could hear Marcos talking of the near future when he should be in thesaddle again. And her eyes grew gloomy and dark with those velvet depthsthat lie in hazel eyes when they are grave. Her kingdom was slipping awayfrom her.

  She was standing thus when the sound of a horse's feet caught herattention. A horseman was coming up the slope from the village to thecastle of Torre Garda.

  She looked at him with eyes that had been trained by Marcos in theholiday times to see great distances in the mountains. Then she turnedand reentered the sick man's room.

  "There is another visitor coming to make inquiry into your welfare--it isSenor Mon."

  And she looked for the gleam that immediately lighted Marcos' dark eyes.

  Sarrion was out. He had ridden to a distant hamlet earlier in the day.The tidings of this journey might well have reached Evasio Mon's ears.Cousin Peligros was taking the siesta by which she sought to forestall apossible fatigue later in the day. There are some people who seem to havethe misfortune to be absent on the rare occasions when they are wanted.

  "He is not coming into this room," said Juanita, coolly. "I will go downand see him."

  Evasio Mon greeted her with a gay smile.

  "I am so glad," he said, "to hear that all goes well with Marcos. Weheard of his accident at Pampeluna. I had a day of leisure so I rode outto pay my respects."

  He glanced at her, but did not specify whether he had come to pay hisrespects to her as a bride or to Marcos as an invalid.

  "It is a long way to come for a mere
politeness," replied Juanita, whocould meet smile with smile if need be. But the eyes before which EvasioMon turned aside were grave enough.

  "It is not a mere politeness," he answered. "I have known Marcos since hewas a child; and have watched his progress in the world--not always witha light heart."

  "That is kind of you," replied Juanita. "But why watch him if it givesyou pain?"

  Mon laughed. He was quick to see a joke and Juanita, he knew, was a gaysoul.

  "One cannot help taking an interest in one's friends and is naturallysorry to see them drifting..."

  "Into what...?" asked Juanita turning to the table where a servant hadplaced coffee for the visitor.

  "Politics."

  "Are politics a crime?"

  "They lead to many--but do not let us talk of them--" he broke off with alight gesture dismissing as it were an unpleasant topic. "Since you arehappy," he concluded, looking at her with benevolent eyes.

  He was a man of quick gesture and slow precise speech. He always seemedto mean much more than was conveyed by the mere words he enunciated.Juanita looked quickly at him. What did he know of her happiness? Was shehappy--when she came to think of it? She remembered her gloomy thoughtsof a few minutes earlier on the balcony. When we are young we confoundthoughts with facts. When the heart is young it makes for itself a newheaven and a new earth from a word, a glance, a silence. It is adifferent earth from this one, but who can tell that it is not the sameheaven as that for which men look?

  Marcos was talking politics in the room overhead, forgetting her perhapsby now. Evasio Mon's suggestion had come at an opportune moment.

  "Leon is much exercised on your account," said Mon, quietly, as if he haddivined her thoughts. It was unlike Leon, perhaps, to be exercised aboutanything but his own soul; for he was a very devout man. But Juanita wasnot likely to pause and reflect on that point.

  "Why?" she asked.

  "He naturally dislikes the idea of your being dragged into politics,"answered Mon, gently.

  "I? Why should I be dragged into politics?"

  Mon made a deprecatory gesture. It seemed that he found himself drawnagain to speak of a subject that was distasteful to him. Then he shruggedhis shoulders.

  "Well," he said, half to himself, "we live in a practical age. Let us bepractical. But he would have preferred that you should marry for love.Come, let us change the subject, my child. How is Sarrion? In goodhealth, I hope."

  "It is very kind of Leon to exercise his mind on my account," saidJuanita steadily. "But I can manage my own affairs."

  "Those are my own words," answered Mon soothingly. "I said to him:'Juanita is no longer a child; Marcos is honest, he will not havedeceived her; he must have told her that such a marriage is a merequestion of politics; that there is no thought of love.'"

  He glanced sharply at her. It was almost prophetic; for Marcos had usedthe very words. It is not difficult to be prophetic if one can sink selfsufficiently to cloak one's thoughts with the mind of another and thusdivine the workings of his brain. Juanita remembered that Marcos had toldher that this was a matter of politics. Mon was only guessing; but heguessed right. The greatest men the world has produced only guessed afterall; but they did not guess wrong.

  "Such a fortune as yours," he said, with an easy laugh, "would make ormar any cause you see. Your fortune is perhaps your misfortune--whoknows?"

  Juanita laughed also, as at a pleasant conceit. The wit that had baffledFather Muro was ready for Evasio Mon. A woman will take her stand beforeher own heart and defy the world. Juanita's eyes flashed across the man'sgentle face.

  "But," she said, "if the fortune is my own; if I prefer that Marcosshould have it--to the church?"

  Evasio Mon smiled gently.

  "Of course," he murmured. "That is what I said to Leon, and to Sor Teresaalso, who naturally is troubled about you. Though there are otheralternatives. Neither Marcos nor the Church need have it. You could haveit yourself as your father, my old and dear friend, intended it."

  "How could I have it myself?" asked Juanita, whose curiosity was aroused.

  Mon shrugged his shoulders.

  "The Pope could annul such a marriage as yours by a stroke of the pen ifhe wished." He paused, looking at her beneath his light lashes. "And I amtold he does wish it. What the Pope wishes--well, one must try to be agood Catholic if one can."

  Juanita smiled. She did not perhaps consider herself called upon to admitthe infallibility of his Holiness in matters of the heart. She knewbetter than the Pope. Mon saw that he had struck a false note.

  "I am a sentimentalist myself," he said, with a frank laugh. "I shouldlike every girl to marry for love. I should like love to be treated assomething sacred--not as a joke. But I am getting to be an old man,Juanita. I am behind the times. Do I hear Sarrion in the passage?"

  He rose as he spoke and went towards the door. Sarrion came in at thatmoment. The Spanish sense of hospitality is strongly Arabic. Mon hadridden many miles. Sarrion greeted him almost eagerly.