'Come back,' whispered General Vincente. 'Slowly, my child— slowly.'

Estella stood for a moment looking down with a royal insolence, then turned, and with measured steps approached the window. As she passed in she met Conyngham's eyes, and that one moment assuredly made two lives worth living.



CHAPTER XXIX. MIDNIGHT AND DAWN.



'I have set my life upon a cast And I will stand the hazard of the die.'

'Excellency,' reported a man who entered the room at this moment, 'they are bringing carts of fuel through the Calle de la Ciudad to set against the door and burn it.'

'To set against which door, my honest friend?'

'The great door on the Plaza, Excellency; the other is an old door of iron.'

'And they cannot burn it or break it open?'

'No, Excellency. And, besides, there are loopholes in the thickness of the wall at the side.'

The General smiled on this man as being after his own heart.

'One may not shoot to-night, my friend. I have already given the order.'

'But one may prick them with the sword, Excellency?' suggested the trooper, with a sort of suppressed enthusiasm.

The General shrugged his shoulders, wisely tolerant.

'Oh yes,' he answered, 'I suppose one may prick them with the sword.'

Conyngham, who had been standing half in and half out of the open window, listening to this conversation, now came forward.

'I think,' he said, 'that I can clear the Plaza from time to time if you give me twenty men. We can thus gain time.'

'Street-fighting,' answered the General gravely. 'Do you know anything of it? It is nasty work.'

'I know something of it. One has to shout very loud. I studied it- -at Dublin University.'

'To be sure—I forgot.'

Julia and Estella watched and listened. Their lot had been cast in the paths of war, and since childhood they had remembered naught else. But neither had yet been so near to the work, nor had they seen and heard men talk and plan with a certain grim humour—a curt and deliberate scorn of haste or excitement—as these men spoke and planned now. Conyngham and Concepcion Vara were altered by these circumstances—there was a light in their eyes which women rarely see, but the General was the same little man of peace and of a high domestic virtue, who seemed embarrassed by a sword which was obviously too big for him. Yet in all their voices there rang alike a queer note of exultation. For man is a fighting animal, and from St. Paul down to the humblest little five-foot-one recruit, would find life a dull affair were there no strife in it.

'Yes,' said the General, after a moment's reflection, 'that is a good idea, and will gain time. But let them first bring their fuel and set it up. Every moment is a gain.'

At this instant some humorist in the crowd threw a stone in at the open window. The old priest picked up the missile and examined it curiously.

'It is fortunate,' he said, 'that the stones are fixed in Toledo. In Xeres they are loose, and are always in the air. I wonder if I can hit a citizen.' And he threw the stone back.

'Close the shutters,' said the General. 'Let us avoid arousing ill- feeling.'

The priest drew the jalousies together, but did not quite shut them. Vincente stood and looked out through the aperture at the moonlit square and the dark shadows moving there.

'I wish they would shout,' he said. 'It is unnatural. They are like children. When there is noise there is little mischief.'

Then he remained silent for some minutes, watching intently. All in the room noted his every movement. At length he turned on his heel.

'Go, my friend,' he said to Conyngham. 'Form your men in the Calle de la Ciudad, and charge round in line. Do not place yourself too much in advance of your men, or you will be killed, and remember— the point! Resist the temptation to cut—the point is best.'

He patted Conyngham on the arm affectionately, as if he were sending him to bed with a good wish, and accompanied him to the door.

'I knew,' he said, returning to the window and rubbing his hands together, 'that that was a good man the first moment I saw him.'

He glanced at Estella, and then, turning, opened another window, setting the shutters ajar so as to make a second point of observation.

'My poor child,' he whispered, as she went to the window and looked out, 'it is an ill-fortune to have to do with men whose trade this is.'

Estella smiled—a little whitely—and said nothing. The moon was now shining from an almost cloudless sky. The few fleecy remains of the storm sailing towards the east only added brightness to the night. It was almost possible to see the faces of the men moving in the square below, and to read their expressions. The majority stood in a group in the centre of the Plaza, while a daring few, reckoning on the Spanish aversion to firearms, ran forward from time to time and set a bundle of wood or straw against the door beneath the balcony.

Some, who appeared to be the leaders, looked up constantly and curiously at the windows, wondering if any resistance would be made. Had they known that General Vincente was in that silent house they would probably have gone home to bed, and the crowd would have dispersed like smoke.

Suddenly there arose a roar to the right hand of the square where the Calle de la Ciudad was situated, and Conyngham appeared for a moment alone, running towards the group, with the moonlight flashing on his sword. At his heels an instant later a single line of men swung round the corner and charged across the square.

'Dear, dear,' muttered the General; 'too quick, my friend, too quick!'

For Conyngham was already among the crowd, which broke and surged back towards the Cathedral. He paused for a moment to draw his sword out of a dark form that lay upon the ground, as a cricketer draws a stump. He had, at all events, remembered the point. The troopers swept across the square like a broom, sending the people as dust before them, and leaving the clean, moonlit square behind. They also left behind one or two shadows, lying stark upon the around. One of these got upon its knees and crawled painfully away, all one-sided, like a beetle that has been trodden underfoot. Those watching from the windows saw with a gasp of horror that part of him—part of an arm—had been left behind, and a sigh of relief went up when he stopped crawling and lay quite still.

The troopers were now retreating slowly towards the Calle de la Ciudad.

'Be careful, Conyngham,' shouted the General from the balcony. 'They will return.'

And as he spoke a rattling fire was opened upon them from the far corner of the square, where the crowd had taken refuge in the opening of the Calle del Arco. Immediately, the people, having noted that the troopers were few in number, charged down upon them. The men fought in line, retreating step by step, their swords gleaming in the moonlight. Estella, hearing footsteps in the room behind her, turned in time to see her father disappearing through the doorway. Concepcion Vara, coatless, as he loved to work, his white shirtsleeves fluttering as his arm swung, had now joined the troopers, and was fighting by Conyngham's side.

Estella and Julia were out on the balcony now, leaning over and forgetting all but the breathless interest of battle. Concha stood beside them, muttering and cursing like any soldier.

They saw Vincente appear at the corner of the Calle de la Ciudad and throw away his scabbard as he ran.

'Now, my children!' he cried in a voice that Estella had never heard before, which rang out across the square, and was answered by a yell that was nothing but a cry of sheer delight. The crowd swayed back as if before a gust of wind, and the General, following it, seemed to clear a space for himself as a reaper clears away the standing corn before him. It was, however, only for a moment. The crowd surged back, those in front against their will, and on to the glittering steel—those behind shouting encouragement.

'Name of God!' shouted Concha, and was gone. They saw him a minute later appear in the square, having thrown aside his cassock. He made a strange lean figure of a man with his knee-breeches and dingy purple stockings, his grey flannel shirt, and the moonlight shining on his tonsured head. He fought without skill, and heedless of danger, swinging a great sword that he had picked up from the hand of a fallen trooper, and each blow that he got home killed its victim. The metal of the man had suddenly shown itself after years of suppression. This, as Vincente had laughingly said, was no priest, but a soldier. Concepcion, in the thick of it, using the knife now with a deadly skill, looked over his shoulder and laughed.

Suddenly the crowd swayed. The faint sound of a distant bugle came to the ears of all.

'It is nothing,' shouted Concha, in English. 'It is nothing. It is I who sent the bugler round.'

And his great sword whistled into a man's brain. In another moment the square was empty, for the politicians who came to murder a woman had had enough steel. The sound of the bugle, intimating, as they supposed, the arrival of troops, completed the work of demoralisation which the recognition of General Vincente had begun.

The little party—the few defenders of the Casa del Ayuntamiento— were left in some confusion in the Plaza, and Estella saw with a sudden cold fear that Conyngham and Concha were on their knees in the midst of a little group of hesitating men. It was Concha who rose first and held up his hand to the watchers on the balcony, bidding them stay where they were. Then Conyngham rose to his feet slowly, as one bearing a burden. Estella looked down in a sort of dream, and saw her lover carrying her father towards the house, her mind only half comprehending, in that semi-dreamlike reception of sudden calamity which is one of Heaven's deepest mercies.

It was Concepcion who came into the room first, his white shirt dyed with blood in great patches like the colour on a piebald horse. A cut in his cheek was slowly dripping. He went straight to a sofa covered in gorgeous yellow satin, and set the cushions in order.

'Senorita,' he said, and spread out his hands. The tears were in his eyes, 'Half of Spain,' he added, 'would rather that it had been the Queen—and the world is poorer.'

A moment later Concha came into the room dragging on his cassock.

'My child, we are in God's hand,' he said, with a break in his gruff voice.

And then came the heavy step of one carrying sorrow.

Conyngham laid his burden on the sofa. General Vincente was holding his handkerchief to his side, and his eyes, which had a thoughtful look, saw only Estella's face.

'I have sent for a doctor,' said Conyngham. 'Your father is wounded.'

'Yes,' said Vincente immediately; 'but I am in no pain, my dear child. There is no reason, surely, for us to distress ourselves.'

He looked round and smiled.

'And this good Conyngham,' he added, 'carried me like a child.'

Julia was on her knees at the foot of the sofa, her face hidden in her hands.

'My dear Julia,' he said, 'why this distress?'

'Because all of this is my doing,' she answered, lifting her drawn and terror-stricken face.

'No, no!' said Vincente, with a characteristic pleasantry. 'You take too much upon yourself. All these things are written down for us beforehand. We only add the punctuation—delaying a little or hurrying a little.'

They looked at him silently, and assuredly none could mistake the shadows that were gathering on his face. Estella, who was holding his hand, knelt on the floor by his side, quiet and strong, offering silently that sympathy which is woman's greatest gift.

Concepcion, who perhaps knew more of this matter than any present, looked at Concha and shook his head. The priest was buttoning his cassock, and began to seek something in his pocket.

'Your breviary?' whispered Concepcion; 'I saw it lying out there— among the dead.'

'It is a comfort to have one's duty clearly defined,' said the General suddenly, in a clear voice. He was evidently addressing Conyngham. 'One of the advantages of a military life. We have done our best, and this time we have succeeded. But—it is only deferred. It will come at length, and Spain will be a republic. It is a failing cause—because, at the head of it, is a bad woman.'

Conyngham nodded, but no one spoke. No one seemed capable of following his thoughts. Already he seemed to look at them as from a distance, as if he had started on a journey and was looking back. During this silence there came a great clatter in the streets, and a sharp voice cried 'Halt!' The General turned his eyes towards the window.

'The cavalry,' said Conyngham, 'from Madrid.'

'I did not expect—them,' said Vincente slowly, 'before the dawn.'

The sound of the horses' feet and the clatter of arms died away as the troop passed on towards the Calle de la Ciudad, and the quiet of night was again unbroken.

Then Concha, getting down on to his knees, began reciting from memory the office—which, alas! he knew too well.

When it was finished, and the gruff voice died away, Vincente opened his eyes.

'Every man to his trade,' he said, with a little laugh.

Then suddenly he made a grimace.

'A twinge of pain,' he said deprecatingly, as if apologising for giving them the sorrow of seeing it. 'It will pass—before the dawn.'

Presently he opened his eyes again and smiled at Estella, before he moved with a tired sigh and turned his face towards that Dawn which knows no eventide.



CHAPTER XXX. THE DAWN OF PEACE.



'Quien no ama, no vive.'

The fall of Morella had proved to be, as many anticipated, the knell of the Carlist cause. Cabrera, that great general and consummate leader, followed Don Carlos, who had months earlier fled to France. General Espartero—a man made and strengthened by circumstances—was now at the height of his fame, and for the moment peace seemed to be assured to Spain. It was now a struggle between Espartero and Queen Christina. But with these matters the people of Spain had little to do. Such warfare of the council-chamber and the boudoir is carried on quietly, and the sound of it rarely reaches the ear, and never the heart, of the masses. Politics, indeed, had been the daily fare of the Spaniards for so long that their palates were now prepared to accept any sop so long as it was flavoured with peace. Aragon was devastated, and the northern provinces had neither seed nor labourers for the coming autumn. The peasants who, having lost faith in Don Carlos, rallied round Cabrera, now saw themselves abandoned by their worshipped leader, and turned hopelessly enough homewards. Thus gradually the country relapsed into quiet, and empty garners compelled many to lay aside the bayonet and take up the spade who, having tasted the thrill of battle, had no longer any taste for the ways of peace.

Frederick Conyngham was brought into sudden prominence by the part he played in the disturbance at Toledo—which disturbance proved, as history tells, to be a forerunner of the great revolution a year later in Madrid. Promotion was at this time rapid, and the Englishman made many strides in a few months. Jealousy was so rife among the Spanish leaders, Christinos distrusted so thoroughly the reformed Carlists, that one who was outside these petty considerations received from both sides many honours on the sole recommendation of his neutrality.

'And besides,' said Father Concha, sitting in the sunlight on his church steps at Ronda, reading to the barber, and the shoemaker, and other of his parishioners, the latest newspaper, 'and besides—he is clever.'

He paused, slowly taking a pinch of snuff.

'Where the river is deepest it makes least noise,' he added.

The barber wagged his head after the manner of one who will never admit that he does not understand an allusion. And before any could speak the clatter of horses in the narrow street diverted attention. Concha rose to his feet.

'Ah!' he said, and went forward to meet Conyngham, who was riding with Concepcion at his side.

'So you have come, my son,' he said, shaking hands. He looked up into the Englishman's face, which was burnt brown by service under a merciless sun. Conyngham looked lean and strong, but his eyes had no rest in them. This was not a man who had all he wanted.

'Are you come to Ronda, or are you passing through?' asked the priest.

'To Ronda. As I passed the Casa Barenna I made inquiries. The ladies are in the town, it appears.'

'Yes; they are with Estella in the house you know—unless you have forgotten it.'

'No,' answered Conyngham getting out of the saddle. 'No; I have forgotten nothing.'

Concepcion came forward and led the horse away.

'I will walk to the Casa Vincente. Have you the time to accompany me?' said Conyngham.

'I have always time—for my neighbour's business,' replied Concha. And they set off together.

'You walk stiffly,' said Concha. 'Have you ridden far?'

'From Osuna—forty miles since daybreak.'

'You are in a hurry.'

'Yes, I am in a hurry.'

Without further comment he extracted from inside his smart tunic a letter—the famous letter in a pink envelope—which he handed to Concha.

'Yes,' said the priest, turning it over. 'You and I first saw this in the Hotel de la Marina at Algeciras, when we were fools not to throw it into the nearest brazier. We should have saved a good man's life, my friend.'

He handed the letter back, and thoughtfully dusted his cassock where it was worn and shiny with constant dusting, so that the snuff had nought to cling to.

'And you have got it—at last. Holy saints—these Englishmen! Do you always get what you want, my son?'

'Not always,' replied Conyngham, with an uneasy laugh. 'But I should be a fool not to try.'

'Assuredly,' said Concha, 'assuredly. And you have come to Ronda— to try?'

'Yes.'

They walked on in silence, on the shady side of the street, and presently passed and saluted a priest—one of Concha's colleagues in this city of the South.

'There walks a tragedy,' said Concha, in his curt way. 'Inside every cassock there walks a tragedy—or a villain.'

After a pause it was Concha who again broke the silence. Conyngham seemed to be occupied with his own thoughts.

'And Larralde—?' said the priest.

'I come from him—from Barcelona,' answered Conyngham, 'where he is in safety. Catalonia is full of such as he. Sir John Pleydell, before leaving Spain, bought this letter for two hundred pounds—a few months ago—when I was a poor man and could not offer a price for it. But Larralde disappeared when the plot failed, and I have only found him lately in Barcelona.'

'In Barcelona?' echoed Concha.

'Yes; where he can take a passage to Cuba, and where he awaits Julia Barenna.'

'Ah!' said Concha, 'so he also is faithful—because life is not long, my son. That is the only reason. How wise was the great God when He made a human life short! '

'I have a letter,' continued Conyngham, 'from Larralde to the Senorita Barenna.'

'So you parted friends in Barcelona—after all—when his knife has been between your shoulders?'

'Yes.'

'God bless you, my son!' said the priest, in Latin, with his careless, hurried gesture of the Cross.

After they had walked a few paces he spoke again.

'I shall go to Barcelona with her,' he said, 'and marry her to this man. When one has no affairs of one's own there always remain—for old women and priests—the affairs of one's neighbour. Tell me—' he paused and looked fiercely at him under shaggy brows—'tell me why you came to Spain.'

'You want to know who and what I am—before we reach the Calle Mayor?' said Conyngham.

'I know what you are, amigo mio, better than yourself, perhaps.'

As they walked through the narrow streets Conyngham told his simple history, dwelling more particularly on the circumstances preceding his departure from England, and Concha listened with no further sign of interest than a grimace or a dry smile here and there.

'The mill gains by going, and not by standing still,' he said, and added, after a pause, 'But it is always a mistake to grind another's wheat for nothing.'

They were now approaching the old house in the Calle Mayor, and Conyngham lapsed into a silence which his companion respected. They passed under the great doorway into the patio, which was quiet and shady at this afternoon hour. The servants, of whom there are a multitude in all great Spanish houses, had apparently retired to the seclusion of their own quarters. One person alone was discernible amid the orange trees and in the neighbourhood of the murmuring fountain. She was asleep in a rocking-chair, with a newspaper on her lap. She preferred the patio to the garden, which was too quiet for one of her temperament. In the patio she found herself better placed to exchange a word with those engaged in the business of the house, to learn, in fact, from the servants the latest gossip, to ask futile questions of them, and to sit in that idleness which will not allow others to be employed. In a word, this was the Senora Barenna, and Concha, seeing her, stood for a moment in hesitation. Then, with a signal to Conyngham, he crept noiselessly across the tessellated pavement to the shadow of the staircase. They passed up the broad steps without sound and without awaking the sleeping lady. In the gallery above, the priest paused and looked down into the courtyard, his grim face twisted in a queer smile. Then, at the woman sitting there—at life and all its illusions, perhaps—he shrugged his shoulders and passed on.

In the drawing-room they found Julia, who leapt to her feet and hurried across the floor when she saw Conyngham. She stood looking at him breathlessly, her whole history written in her eyes.

'Yes,' she whispered, as if he had called her. 'Yes—what is it? Have you come to tell me—something?'

'I have come to give you a letter, senorita,' he answered, handing her Larralde's missive. She held out her hand, and never took her eyes from his face.

Concha walked to the window—the window whence the Alcalde of Ronda had seen Conyngham hand Julia Barenna another letter. The old priest stood looking down into the garden, where, amid the feathery foliage of the pepper trees and the bamboos, he could perceive the shadow of a black dress. Conyngham also turned away, and thus the two men who held this woman's happiness in the hollow of their hands stood listening to the crisp rattle of the paper as she tore the envelope and unfolded her lover's letter. A great happiness and a great sorrow are alike impossible of realisation. We only perceive their extent when their importance has begun to wane.

Julia Barenna read the letter through to the end, and it is possible (for women are blind in such matters) failed to perceive the selfishness in every line of it. Then, with the message of happiness in her hand, she returned to the chair she had just quitted, with a vague wonder in her mind, and the very human doubt that accompanies all possession, as to whether the price paid has not been too high.

Concha was the first to move. He turned and crossed the room towards Conyngham.

'I see,' he said, 'Estella in the garden.'

And they passed out of the room together, leaving Julia Barenna alone with her thoughts. On the broad stone balcony Concha paused.

'I will stay here,' he said. He looked over the balustrade. Senora Barenna was still asleep.

'Do not awake her,' he whispered. 'Let all sleeping things sleep.'

Conyngham passed down the stairs noiselessly, and through the doorway into the garden.

'And at the end—the Gloria is chanted,' said Concha, watching him go.

The scent of the violets greeted Conyngham as he went forward beneath the trees planted there in the Moslems' day. The running water murmured sleepily as it hurried in its narrow channel towards the outlet through the grey wall, whence it leapt four hundred feet into the Tajo below.

Estella was seated in the shade of a gnarled fig tree, where tables and chairs indicated the Spanish habit of an out-of-door existence. She rose as he came towards her, and met his eyes gravely. A gleam of sun glancing through the leaves fell on her golden hair, half hidden by the mantilla, and showed that she was pale with some fear or desire.

'Senorita,' he said, 'I have brought you the letter.' He held it out, and she took it, turning over the worn envelope absent- mindedly.

'I have not read it myself, and am permitted to give it to you on one condition—namely, that you destroy it as soon as you have read it.'

She looked at it again.

'It contains the lives of many men—their lives and the happiness of those connected with them,' said Conyngham. 'That is what you hold in your hand, senorita—as well as my life and happiness.'

She raised her dark eyes to his for a moment, and their tenderness was not of earth or of this world at all. Then she tore the envelope and its contents slowly into a hundred pieces, and dropped the fluttering papers into the stream pacing in its marble bed towards the Tajo and the oblivion of the sea.

'There—I have destroyed the letter,' she said, with a thoughtful little smile. Then, looking up, she met his eyes.

'I did not want it. I am glad you gave it to me. It will make a difference to our lives. Though—I never wanted it.'

Then she came slowly towards him.

THE END