CHAPTER XXII
HIS MOTHER'S ROSARY
It was, as the soldier had said most truly, a cold morning to be shotin. But the Carlists, accustomed to Cabrera's summary methods, appearedto think but little of the matter, and jested as the firing parties wereselected and drawn out. Ragged and desolate they looked as they stood ona slight slope between the foreigners and the red dawn, biting theircartridges and fingering the pulls of their rifles with hands numbedwith cold. At elbow and knee their rags of uniforms flapped like bunchesof ribbons at a fair.
"In the garden!" whispered Luis Fernandez to Cabrera.
"To the garden!" commanded the general, lighting a new cigarette andpuffing vigorously, "and at this point I may as well bid you good-bye. Iwish our acquaintance had been pleasanter. But the fortune of war,gentlemen! My mother had not so long time to say her prayers at thehands of your friend Nogueras--and she was a woman and old, gentlemen. Idoubt not you know as well how to die as she?"
And they did. Not one of them uttered a word. John Mortimer, seeingthere was now no chance of making his thousand pounds, set an exampleof unbending dignity. He comported himself, indeed, exactly as he wouldhave done on his marriage day. That is, he knew that the eyes of manywere upon him, and he resolved not to shame the performance. So he wentthrough his part with the exact English mixture of awkward shyness andsulky self-respect which would have carried him creditably to the altarin any English church.
Etienne faced his death like the son of an ancient race, and a goodCatholic. He could not have a confessor, but he said his prayers,committed his soul to God and the Virgin, and faced the black muzzlesnot greatly abashed.
As for El Sarria, death was his _metier_, his familiar friend. He hadlived with him for years, as a man with a wife, rising up and lyingdown, eating and breathing in his company. "The fortune of war," asCabrera said. El Sarria was ready. Dolores and her babe were safe. Heasked no more.
And not less readily fell into line Rollo Blair. A little apart he stoodas they made ready to march out of the presence of the Carlist general.John Mortimer was already on his way, carefully and conscientiouslyordering his going, that he might not in these last things disgrace hisnation and his upbringing. Etienne and Ramon were following him. Stillthe young Scot lingered. Cabrera, nervously fingering his accoutrementand signing papers at a folding table, found time to eye him withcuriosity.
"Did he mean to make a last plea for mercy?" he thought.
Cabrera smiled contemptuously. A friend of Nogueras might know RamonCabrera of Tortosa better. But Rollo had no such thought. He had in hisfingers Etienne's last slip of Alcoy paper, in which the cigarette ofSpain, unfailing comforter, is wrapped. To fill it he had crumbled hislast leaf of tobacco. Now it was rolled accurately and with lingeringparticularity, because it was to be the last. It lay in his palm featlymade, a cigarette worthy to be smoked by Don Carlos himself.
Almost unconsciously Rollo put it to his lips. It was a cold morning,and it is small wonder that his hand shook a little. He was justtwenty-three, and his main regret was that he had not kissed littleConcha Cabezos--with her will, or against it--all would have been onenow. Meantime he looked about him for a light. The general noticed hishesitation, rose from the table, and with a low bow offered his own, asone gentleman to another. Rollo thanked him. The two men approached asif to embrace. Each drew a puff of his cigarette, till the points glowedred. Rollo, retreating a little, swept a proud acknowledgment of thankswith his _sombrero_. Cabrera bowed with his hand on his heart. The youngScot clicked his heels together as if on parade, and strode out withhead erect and squared shoulders in the rear of his companions.
"By God's bread, a man!" said Cabrera, as he resumed his writing, "'tisa thousand pities I must shoot him!"
They stood all four of them in the garden of the mill-house, underneaththe fig trees in whose shade El Sarria had once hidden himself to watchthe midnight operations of Don Tomas.
The sun was just rising. His beams red, low, and level shot across themill-wheel, turning the water of the unused overshot into a myriadpearls and diamonds as it splashed through a side culvert into thegorge beneath, in which the gloom of night lingered.
The four men still stood in order. Mortimer and Etienne in the middle,with slim Rollo and the giant Ramon towering on either flank.
"_Load with ball--at six paces--make ready!_"
The officer's commands rang out with a certain haste, for he couldalready hear the clattering of the horses of the general's cavalcade,and he knew that if upon his arrival he had not carried out his orders,he might expect a severe reprimand.
But it was not the general's suite that rode so furiously. The soundcame from a contrary direction. Two horses were being ridden at speed,and at sight of the four men set in order against the wall the foremostrider sank both spurs into her white mare and dashed forward with a wildcry.
The officer already had his sword raised in the air, the falling ofwhich was to be the signal for the volley of death. But it did not fall.Something in the aspect of the girl-rider as she swept up parallel withthe low garden wall, her hair floating disordered about hershoulders--her eyes black and shining like stars--the sheaf of papersshe waved in her hand, all compelled the Carlist to suspend that lastirrevocable order.
It was Concha Cabezos who arrived when the eleventh hour was long past,and leaped from her reeking horse opposite the place of execution. Withher, wild-haired as a Maenad, rode La Giralda, cross-saddled like a man.
"General Cabrera! Where is General Cabrera?" cried Concha. "I must seehim instantly. These are no traitors. They are true men, and in theservice of Don Carlos. Here are their papers!"
"Where is Ramon Cabrera? Tell me quickly!" cried La Giralda. "I havenews for him. I was with his mother when she died. They whipped me atthe cross of Tortosa to tell what I knew--stripping me to the waist theywhipped me, being old and the mother of many. Cabrera will avenge me.Let me but see Ramon Cabrera whom of old I suckled at my breasts!"
The officer hesitated. In such circumstances one might easily do wrong.He might shoot these men, and after all find that they were innocent. Hepreferred to wait. The living are more easily deprived of life than thedead restored to it. Such was his thought.
In any case he had not long to wait.
Round the angle of the mill-house swept the general and his staff,brilliant in scarlet and white, heightened by the glitter of abundantgold-lace. For the ex-butcher of Tortosa was a kind of military dandy,and loved to surround himself with the foppery of the _matador_ and thebrigand. At heart, indeed, he was still the _guerrillero_ of Morella,riding home through the streets of that little rebel city after asuccessful foray.
As his eyes fell on the row of men dark against the dusty _adobe_ of thegarden wall, and on the two pale women, a dark frown overspread hisface.
"What is the meaning of this?" he cried. "Why have you not obeyed yourinstructions? Why are these men not yet dead?"
The officer trembled, and began an explanation, pointing to Concha andLa Giralda, both of whom stood for a moment motionless. Then flingingherself over the low wall of the garden as if her years had more nearlyapproached seventeen than seventy, La Giralda caught the great man bythe stirrup.
"Little Ramon, Ramon Cabrera," she cried, "have you forgotten your oldnurse, La Giralda of Sevilla, your mother's gossip, your own playmate?"
The general turned full upon her, with the quick indignant threat of onewho considers himself duped, in his countenance. It had gone ill with LaGiralda if she had not been able to prove her case. But she heldsomething in her hand, the sight of which brought the butcher of Tortosadown from his saddle as quickly as if a Cristino bullet had pierced himto the heart.
La Giralda was holding out to him an old string of beads, simply carvedout of some brown oriental nut, but so worn away by use that thestringing had almost cut through the hard and polished shell.
"My mother's rosary!" he cried, and sinking on his knees, he devoutlyreceived and kissed it. He abod
e thus a moment looking up to thesky--he, the man who had waded in blood during six years of bitterwarfare. He kissed the worn beads one by one and wept. They were hismother's way to heaven. And he did not know a better. In which perchancehe was right.
"Whence gat you this?" cried Cabrera, rising sharply as a thought struckhim; "my mother never would have parted with these in her life--youplundered it from her body after her death! Quick, out with your story,or you die!"
"Nay, little foster-son," said La Giralda, "I was indeed with yourmother at the last--when she was shot by Nogueras, and five minutesbefore she died she gave her rosary into my hands to convey to you.'Take this to my son,' she said, 'and bid him never forget his mother,nor to say his prayers night and morn. Bid him swear it on these sacredbeads!' So I have brought them to you. She kissed them before she died.At the risk of my life have I brought it."
"And these," said Cabrera--"do you know these dogs, La Giralda?"
He pointed to the four men who still stood by the wall, the firing partyat attention before them, and the eyes of all on the next wave of thegeneral's hand which would mean life or death.
La Giralda drew a quick breath. Would the hold she had over him besufficient for what she was about to ask? He was a fierce man and acruel, this Ramon Cabrera, who loved naught in the world except hismother, and had gained his present ascendency in the councils of DonCarlos by the unbending and consistent ferocity of his conduct.
"These are no traitors, General," she said; "they are true men, and deepin the councils of the cause."
She bent and whispered in his ear words which others could not hear. Theface of the Carlist general darkened from a dull pink to purple, andthen his colour ebbed away to a ghastly ashen white as he listened.
Twice he sprang up from the stone bench where he had seated himself,ground his heel into the gravel brought from the river-bed beneath, andmuttered a characteristic imprecation, "Ten for one of their women Ihave slain already--by San Vicente after this it shall be a hundred!"
For La Giralda was telling him the tale of his mother's shooting byNogueras.
Then all suddenly he reseated himself, and beckoned to Concha.
"Come hither," he said; "let me see these fellows' papers, and tell mehow they came into your hands!"
Concha was ready.
"The Senor, the tall stranger, had a mission to the Lady Superior of theConvent," she began. "From Don Baltasar Varela it was, Prior of thegreat Carlist Monastery of Montblanch. He trusted his papers into herhands as a guarantee of his loyalty and good faith, and here they are!"
Concha flashed them from her bosom and laid them in the general's hands.Usually Cabrera was blind to female charms, but upon this occasion hiseye rested with pleasure on the quick and subtle grace of the Andaluse.
"Then you are a nun?" he queried, looking sharply at her figure anddress.
"Ah, no," replied Concha, thinking with some hopefulness that she was tohave at least a hearing, "I am not even a lay sister. The good LadySuperior had need of a housekeeper--one who should be free of theconvent and yet able to transact business without the walls. It is aserious thing (as your honour knows) to provision even a hundred men whocan live rough and eat sparely--how much harder to please aconvent-school filled from end to end with the best blood in Spain! Andgood blood needs good feeding----"
"As I well knew when I was a butcher in Tortosa!" quoth Cabrera,smiling. "There were a couple of ducal families within the range of mycustom, and they consumed more beef and mutton than a whole _barrio_ ofpoor pottage-eaters!"
To make Cabrera smile was more than half the battle.
"You are sure they had nothing to do with the slayers of my mother?" Hewas fierce again in a moment, and pulled the left flange of hismoustache into his mouth with a quick nervous movement of the fingers.
"I will undertake that no one of them hath ever been further South thanthis village of Sarria," said Concha, somewhat hastily, and withoutsufficient authority.
Cabrera looked at the papers. There was a Carlist commission in the nameof Don Rollo Blair duly made out, a letter from General Elio, chief ofthe staff, commending all the four by name and description to all goodservants of Don Carlos, as trustworthy persons engaged on a dangerousand secret mission. Most of all, however, he seemed to be impressed withthe ring belonging to Etienne, with its revolving gem and concealedportrait of Carlos the Fifth.
He placed it on his finger and gazing intently, asked to whom itbelonged. As soon as he understood, he summoned the little Frenchman tohis presence. Etienne came at the word, calm as usual, and twirling hismoustache in the manner of Rollo.
"This is your ring?" he demanded of the prisoner. Concha tried to catchEtienne's eye to signal to him that he must give Cabrera that upon whichhis fancy had lighted. But her former lover stubbornly avoided her eye.
"That is my ring," he answered dryly, after a cursory inspection of thearticle in question as it lay in the palm of the _guerillero's_ hand.
"It is very precious to you?" asked the butcher of Tortosa,suggestively.
"It was given to me by my cousin, the king," answered Etienne, briefly.
"Then I presume you do not care to part with it?" said Cabrera, turningit about on his finger, and holding it this way and that to the light.
"No," said Etienne, coolly. "You see, my cousin might not give meanother!"
But the butcher of Tortosa could be as simple and direct in his methodsas even Rollo himself.
"Will you give it to me?" he said, still admiring it as it flashed uponhis finger.
Etienne looked at the general calmly from head to foot, Concha all thetime frowning upon him to warn him of his danger. But the young man waspreening himself like a little bantam-cock of vanity, glad to bereckless under the fire of such eyes. He would not have missed thechance for worlds, so he replied serenely, "Do you still intend to shootus?"
"What has that to do with the matter?" growled Cabrera, who was losinghis temper.
"Because if you do," said Etienne, who had been waiting his opportunity,"you are welcome to the jewel--_after_ I am dead. But if I am to live, Ishall require it for myself!"