CHAPTER VIIITHE TRAILThe Count rose again and went to the window without looking at Marcos.They had lived together like brothers, and like brothers, they had falleninto the habit of closing the door of silence upon certain subjects.
Juanita, it would appear, was one of these. For neither was at ease whilespeaking of her. Spaniards and Germans and Englishmen are not notable fora pretty and fanciful treatment of the subject of love. But they approachit with a certain shy delicacy of which the lighter Latin heart has noconception.
The Count glanced over his shoulder, and Marcos, without looking up, musthave seen the action, for he took the opportunity of shaking his head.
"You shake your head," said Sarrion, with a sort of effort to be gay andcareless, "What do you want? She is the prettiest girl in Aragon."
"It is not that," said Marcos, curtly, with a flush on his brown face.
"Then what is it?"
Marcos made no answer. The Count lighted another cigarette, to gain time,perhaps.
"Listen to me," he said at length. "We have always understood each other,except about Juanita. We have nearly always been of the same mind--youand I."
Marcos was leaning his arms on the table and looked across the roomtowards his father with a slow smile.
"Let us try and understand each other about Juanita before we go anyfarther. You think that there may be thoughts in your mind which arebeyond my comprehension. It may not be as bad as that. I allow you, thatas the heart grows older it loses a certain sensitiveness and delicacy offeeling. Still the comprehension of such feelings in younger persons maysurvive. You think that Juanita should be allowed to make her own choice--is it not so--learnt in England, eh?"
"Yes," was the answer.
"And I reply to that; a convent education--the only education open toSpanish girls--does not fit her to make her own choice."
"It is not a question of education.
"No, it is a question of opportunity," said Sarrion sharply. "And aconvent schoolgirl has no opportunity. My friend, a father or a mother,if they are wise, will choose better than a girl thrown suddenly into theworld from the convent gates. But that is not the question. Juanita willnever get outside the convent gates unless we drag her from them--halfagainst her own will."
"We can give her the choice. We have certain rights."
"No rights," replied Sarrion, "that the Church will recognise, and theChurch holds her now within its grip."
"She is only a child. She does not know what life means."
"Exactly so," Sarrion exclaimed, "and that makes their plan all theeasier of execution. They can bring pressure to bear upon her assiduouslyand quite kindly so that she will be brought to see that her only chanceof happiness is the veil. Few men, and no women at all, can be happy in alife of their own choosing if they are assured by persons in dailyintercourse with them--persons whom they respect and love--that in livingthat life they will assuredly be laying up for themselves an eternity ofdamnation. We must try and look at it from Juanita's point of view."
Marcos turned and glanced at his father with a smile.
"That is not so easy," he said. "That is what I have been trying to do."
"But you must not overdo it," replied Sarrion, significantly. "Rememberthat her point of view may be an ignorant one and must be biassed by thestrongest and most dangerous influence. Look at the question also fromthe point of view of a man of the world--and tell me... tell me afterthinking it over carefully--whether you think that you would feel happyin the future, knowing that you had allowed Juanita to choose a conventlife with her eyes blinded."
"I was not thinking of my happiness," said Marcos, quite simply andcurtly.
"Of Juanita's happiness?" ... suggested the Count.
"Yes."
"Then think again and tell me whether you, as a man of the world, can fora moment imagine that Juanita's chance of happiness would be greater inthe convent--whether the Church could make her happier than you could ifyou give her the opportunity of leading the life that God created herfor."
Marcos made no answer. And oddly enough Sarrion seemed to expect none.
"That is ...," he explained in the same careless voice, "if we may go onthe presumption that you are content to place Juanita's happiness beforeyour own."
"I am content to do that."
"Always?" asked Sarrion, gravely.
"Always."
There was a short silence. Then the Count came into the room, and as hepassed Marcos he laid his hand for a moment on his son's broad back.
"Then, my friend," he said, crossing the room and taking up his gloves,"let us get to action. That will please you better than words, I know.Let us go and see Leon--the weakest link in their fine chain. Juanita hasno one in the world but us--but I think we shall be enough."
Leon de Mogente lived in an apartment in the Plaza del Pilar. His father,for whom he had but little affection, had made him a liberal allowancewhich had been spent, so to speak, on his Soul. It elevated the Spirit ofthis excellent young man to decorate his rooms in imitation of asanctuary.
He lived in an atmosphere of aesthetic emotion which he quite mistook forholiness. He was a dandy in the care of his Soul, and tricked himself outto catch the eye of High Heaven.
The Marquis de Mogente was out. He had crossed the Plaza, the servantthought to say a prayer in the Cathedral. On the suggestion of theservant, the Sarrions decided to wait until Leon's return. The man, whohad the air of a murderer (or a Spanish Cathedral chorister), volunteeredto go and seek his master.
"I can say a prayer myself," he said humbly.
"And here is something to put in the poor-box," answered Sarrion with histwisted smile.
"By my soul," he exclaimed, when they were left alone, "this place reeksof hypocrisy."
He looked round the walls with a raised eyebrow.
"I have been trying to discover," he went on, "what was in the mind ofFrancisco as he lay dying in that house in the Calle San Gregorio--whathe was trying to carry out--why he made that will. He sent for Leon, yousee, and must have seen at a glance that he had for a son--a mule, of theworst sort. He probably saw that to leave money to Leon was to give it tothe Church, which meant that it would be spent for the further undoing ofSpain and the propagation of ignorance and superstition."
For Ramon de Sarrion was one of those good Spaniards and good Catholicswho lay the entire blame for the downfall of their country from its greatestate to a Church, which can only hope to live in its present form aslong as superstition and crass ignorance prevail.
"I cannot help thinking," he went on, "that Francisco dimly perceivedthat he was the victim of a careful plot--one sees something like that inall these ramifications. Three million pesetas are worth scheming for.They would make a difference in any cause. They might make all thedifference at this moment in Spain. Kingdoms have been won and lost forless than three million pesetas. I believe he was watched in Cuba, andhis return was known. Or perhaps he was brought back by some cleverforgery. Who knows? At all events, it was known that he had left hismoney nearly all to Leon."
"We will ask Leon," suggested Marcos, "what reason his father gave formaking a new will."
"And he will lie to you," said Sarrion.
"But he will lie badly," murmured Marcos, with his leisurely reflectivesmile.
"I think," said Sarrion, after a pause, "nay, I feel sure that Franciscoleft his fortune to Juanita at the last moment, as a forlornhope--leaving it to you and me to get her out of the hobble in which heplaced her. You know it was always his hope that you and Juanita shouldmarry."
But Marcos' face hardened, and he had nothing to say to this reiterationof the dead man's hope. The silence was not again broken before Leon deMogente came in.
He looked from one to the other with an apprehensive glance. His paleeyes had that dulness which betokens, if not an absorption in the thingsto come, that which often passes for the same, an incompetence to facethe present moment.
"I was about to write to you," he
said, addressing himself to Sarrion. "Iam having a mass celebrated tomorrow in the Cathedral. My father, Iknow... "
"I shall be there," said Sarrion, rather shortly.
"And Marcos?"
"I, also," replied Marcos.
"One must do what one can," said Leon, with a resigned sigh.
Marcos, the man of action and not of words, looked at him and saidnothing. He was perhaps noticing that the dishonest boy had grown into adishonest man. Monastic religion is like a varnish, it only serves tobring out the true colour, and is powerless to alter it by more than ashade. Those who have lived in religious communities know that humannature is the same there as in the world--that a man who is notstraightforward may grow in monastic zeal day by day, but he will nevergrow straightforward. On the other hand, if a man be a good man, religionwill make him better, but it must not be a religion that runs to words.
Leon sat with folded hands and lowered eyes. He was a sort of amateurmonk, and, like all amateurs, he was apt to exaggerate outward signs. Itwas Marcos who spoke at length.
"Do you intend," he asked in his matter-of-fact way, "to make any effortto discover and punish your father's assassins?"
"I have been advised not to."
"By whom?"
Leon looked distressed. He was pained, it would seem, that the friend ofhis childhood should step so bluntly on to delicate ground.
"It is a secret of the confession."
Marcos exchanged a grave glance with his father, who sat back in hischair as one may see a leader sit back while his junior counsel conductsan able cross-examination.
"Have you advised Juanita of the terms of her father's will?"
"I understand," answered Leon, "that it will make but little differenceto Juanita. She has her allowance as I have mine. My father, Iunderstand, had but little to bequeath to her."
Marcos glanced at his father again, and then at the clock. He had, itappeared, finished his cross-examination, and was now characteristicallyanxious to get to action.
Sarrion now took the lead in conversation, and proffered the usualcondolences and desire to help, in the formal Spanish way. He couldhardly conceal his contempt for Leon, who, for his part, was not freefrom embarrassment. They had nothing in common but the subject which hadbrought the Sarrions hither, and upon this point they could not progresssatisfactorily, seeing that Sarrion himself had evidently sustained agreater loss than the dead man's own son.
They rose and took leave, promising to attend the mass next day. Leonbecame interested again at once in this side of the question, which wasnot without a thrill of novelty for him. He had organised and taken partin many interesting and gorgeous ceremonies. But a requiem mass for one'sown father must necessarily be unique in the most varied career ofreligious emotion. He was a little flurried, as a girl is flurried at herfirst ball, and felt that the eye of the black-letter saints was uponhim.
He shook hands absent-mindedly with his friends, and was already makingmental note of their addition to the number secured for to-morrow'sceremony. He was very earnest about it, and Marcos left him with a suddensoftening of the heart towards him, such as the strong must always feelfor the weak.
"You see," said Sarrion, when they were in the street, "what Evasio Monhas made him. I do not know whether you are disposed to hand over Juanitaand her three million pesetas to Evasio Mon as well."
Marcos made no reply, but walked on, wrapt in thought.
"I must see Juanita," he said, at length, after a long silence, andSarrion's wise eyes were softened by a smile which flitted across themlike a flash of sunlight across a darkened field.
"Remember," he said, "that Juanita is a child. She cannot be expected toknow her own mind for at least three years."
Marcos nodded his head, as if he knew what was coming.
"And remember that the danger is imminent--that Evasio Mon is not the manto let the grass grow beneath his feet--that we cannot let Juanitawait... three weeks."
"I know," answered Marcos.