The two men sat side by side in strong contrast. Fate indeed seems to shake men together in a bag, and cast them out upon the world heedless where they may fall; for here was a soldier in the priest's habit, and one carrying a sword who had the keen heart and sure sympathy for joy or sorrow that should ever be found within a black coat if the Master's work is to be well done.

General Vincente smiled at Estella with sang-froid and an unruffled good nature, while the Padre Concha, whose place it surely was to take the lead in such woman's work as this, slowly rubbed his bony hands together, at a loss and incompetent to meet the urgency of the moment.

'Our guest left us yesterday morning,' said the General, 'and of course the Alcalde placed no hindrance on his departure.'

He did not look at Julia, who drew a deep breath and glanced at Estella.

'I do not know if Senor Conyngham left any message for you with Estella--to me he said nothing,' continued Estella's father; and that young lady shook her head.

'No,' she put in composedly.

'Then it remains for us to close this foolish incident, my dear Julia; and for me to remind you, seeing that you are fatherless, that there are in Spain many adventurers who come here seeking the sport of love or war, who will ride away when they have had their fill of either.'

He ceased speaking with a tolerant laugh, as one who, being a soldier himself, would beg indulgence for the failings of his comrades, examined the hilt of his sword, and then looked blandly round on three faces which resolutely refused to cla.s.s the absent Englishman in this category.

'It remains, my dear niece, to satisfy the Alcalde--a mere glance at the letter--sufficient to satisfy him as to the nature of its contents.'

'I have no letter,' said Julia quietly, with her level red lips set hard.

'Not in your possession, but perhaps concealed in some place near at hand--unless it is destroyed.'

'I have destroyed no letter, I have concealed no letter, and I have no letter,' said the girl quietly. Estella moved uneasily in the chair. Her face was colourless and her eyes shone. She watched her cousin's face intently, and beneath his s.h.a.ggy brows the old priest's eyes went from one fair countenance to the other.

'Then,' cried the General, rising to his feet with an air of relief, 'you have but to a.s.sure the Alcalde of this, and the whole incident is terminated. Blown over, my dear Concha--blown over!'

He tapped the priest on the shoulder with great good nature.

Indeed, the world seemed sunny enough and free from cares when General Vincente had to deal with it.

'Yes--yes,' said the Padre, snuff-box in hand. 'Blown over--of course.'

'Then I may send the Alcalde to you, Julia--and you will tell him what you have told us? He cannot but take the word of a lady.'

'Yes--if you like,' answered Julia.

The General's joy knew no bounds.

'That is well,' he cried, 'I knew we could safely rely upon your good sense. Kiss me, Julia--that is well! Come, Estella--we must not keep the horses waiting.'

With a laugh and a nod he went towards the door. 'Blown over, my dear Concha,' he said over his shoulder.

A few minutes later the priest walked down the avenue of walnut trees alone. The bell was ringing for vespers, but the Padre was an autocratic shepherd and did not hurry towards his flock. The sun had set, and in the hollows of the distant mountains the shades of night already lay like a blue veil.

The priest walked on and presently reached the high road. A single figure was upon it--the figure of a man sitting in the shadow of an ilex tree half a mile up the road towards Bobadilla. The man crouched low against a heap of stones and had the air of a wanderer.

His face was concealed in the folds of his cloak.

'Blown over,' muttered the Padre as he turned his back upon Bobadilla and went on towards his church. 'Blown over, of course; but what is Concepcion Vara doing in the neighbourhood of Ronda to- night?'

CHAPTER XII. ON THE TOLEDO ROAD.

'Une bonne intention est une ech.e.l.le trop courte.'

Conyngham made his way without difficulty or incident from Xeres to Cordova, riding for the most part in front of the clumsy diligencia wherein he had bestowed his luggage. The road was wearisome enough, and the last stages, through the fertile plains bordering the Guadalquivir, dusty and monotonous.

At Cordova the traveller found comfortable quarters in an old inn overlooking the river. The ancient city was then, as it is now, a great military centre, and the headquarters of the picturesque corps of horse-tamers, the 'Remonta,' who are responsible for the mounting of the cavalry and the artillery of Spain. Conyngham had, at the suggestion of General Vincente, made such small changes in his costume as would serve to allay curiosity and prevent that gossip of the stable and kitchen which may follow a traveller to his hurt from one side of a continent to the other.

'Wherever you may go learn your way in and out of every town, and you will thus store up knowledge most useful to a soldier,' the General had said in his easy way.

'See you,' Concepcion had observed, wagging his head over a cigarette; 'to go about the world with the eyes open is to conquer the world.'

From his guide, moreover, whose methods were those that Nature teaches to men who live their daily lives in her company, Conyngham learnt much of that road craft which had raised Concepcion Vara to such a proud eminence among the rascals of Andalusia. Cordova was a good object upon which to practise, for Roman and Goth, Moor and Christian, have combined to make its tortuous streets well-nigh incomprehensible to the traveller's mind.

Here Conyngham wandered, or else he sat somnolently on a seat in the Paseo del Gran Capitan in the shade of the orange trees, awaiting the arrival of Concepcion Vara. He made a few acquaintances, as every traveller who is not a bear must needs do in a country where politeness and hospitality and a grave good fellowship are the natural habit of high and low alike. A bullfighter or two, who beguiled the long winter months, when the rings are closed, by a little innocent horse dealing, joined him quietly in the streets and offered him a horse--as between gentlemen of undoubted honour--at a price much below the current value. Or it was perhaps a beggar who came to him on the old yellow marble seat under the orange trees, and chatted affably about his business as being bad in these times of war. Once, indeed, it was a white-haired gentleman, who spoke in English, and asked some very natural questions as to the affairs that brought an Englishman to the town of Cordova. This sweet- spoken old man explained that strangers would do well to avoid all questions of politics and religion, which he cla.s.sed together in one dangerous whole. Nevertheless, Conyngham thought that he perceived his ancient friend the same evening hurrying up the steps of the Jesuit College of La Campania.

Two days elapsed and Concepcion Vara made neither appearance nor sign. On the second evening Conyngham decided to go on alone, prosecuting his journey through the spa.r.s.ely populated valley of the Alcadia to Ciudad Real, Toledo, and Madrid.

'You will ride,' the innkeeper told him, 'from the Guadalquivir to the Guadiana, and if there is rain you may be a month upon the road.'

Conyngham set out in the early morning, and as he threw his leg across the saddle the sun rose over the far misty hills of Ronda, and Concepcion Vara awoke from his night's rest under the wall of an olive terrace above the Bobadilla road, to begin another day of patient waiting and watching to get speech with the maid or the mistress; for he had already inaugurated what he lightly called 'an affair' with Julia's flighty attendant. The sun rose also over the plains of Xeres, and lighted up the picturesque form of Esteban Larralde, in the saddle this hour and more, having learnt that Colonel Monreal's death took place an hour before Conyngham's arrival in the town of Xeres de la Frontera. The letter, therefore, had not been delivered to Colonel Monreal, and was still in Conyngham's possession.

Larralde bestrode a shocking steed, and had but an indifferent seat in the saddle. Nevertheless, the dust rose beneath his horse's feet, and his spurs flashed in the sunlight as this man of many parts hurried on towards Utrera and Cordova.

In the old Moorish palace in Ronda, General Vincente, summoned to a great council of war at Madrid, was making curt military preparations for his journey and the conveyance of his household to the capital. Senora Barenna was for the moment forgetful of her nerves in the excitement of despatching servants in advance to Toledo, where she owned a summer residence. Julia was nervously anxious to be on the road again, and showed by every word and action that restlessness of spirit which is the inheritance of hungry hearts. Estella, quiet and self-contained, attended to the details of moving a vast and formal household with a certain eagerness which in no way resembled Julia's feverish haste. Estella seemed to be one of those happy people who know what they want.

Thus Frederick Conyngham, riding northward alone, seemed to be a pilot to all these persons into whose lives he had suddenly stepped as from a side issue, for they were one and all making ready to follow him to the colder plains of Castile, where existence was full of strife and ambition, of war and those inner wheels that ever jar and grind where politicians contend together for the mastery of a moment.

As he rode on, Conyngham left a message from time to time for his self-appointed servant. At the offices of the diligencias in various towns on the great road from Cordova to Madrid he left word for Concepcion Vara to follow, should the spirit of travel be still upon him, knowing that at these places where travellers were ever pa.s.sing, the t.i.ttle-tattle of the road was on the tongue of every ostler and stable help. And truly enough there followed one who made careful inquiries as to the movements of the Englishman, and heard his messages with a grim smile. But this was not Concepcion Vara.

It was late one evening when Conyngham, who had quitted Toledo in the morning, began to hunger for the sight of the towers and steeples of Madrid. He had ridden all day through the bare country of Cervantes, where to this day Spain rears her wittiest men and plainest women. The sun had just set behind the distant hills of Old Castile, and from the east, over Aranjuez, where the great river cuts Spain in two parts from its centre to the sea, a grey cloud--a very shade of night--was slowly rising. The aspect of the brown plains was dismal enough, and on the horizon the rolling unbroken land seemed to melt away into eternity and infinite s.p.a.ce.

Conyngham reined in and looked around him. So far as eye could reach, no house arose to testify to the presence of man. No labourer toiled home to his lonely hut. For, in this country of many wars and interminable strife, it has, since the days of Nebuchadnezzar, been the custom of the people to congregate in villages and small townships, where a common danger secured some protection against a lawless foe. The road rose and fell in a straight line across the table-land without tree or hedge, and Madrid seemed to belong to another world, for the horizon, which was distant enough, bore no sign of cathedral spire or castle height.

Conyngham turned in his saddle to look back, and there, not a mile away, the form of a hurrying horseman broke the bare line of the dusty road. There was something weird and disturbing in this figure, a suggestion of pursuit in every line. For this was not Concepcion Vara. Conyngham would have known him at once. This was one wearing a better coat; indeed Concepcion preferred to face life and the chances of the world in shirt sleeves.

Conyngham sat in his saddle awaiting the new-comer. To meet on such a road in Spain without pausing to exchange a salutation would be a gratuitous insult, to ride in solitude within hail of another traveller were to excite or betray the deepest distrust. It was characteristic of Conyngham that he already waved his hand in salutation, and was prepared to hail the new-comer as the jolliest companion in the world.

Esteban Larralde, seeing the salutation, gave a short laugh, and jerked the reins of his tired horse. He himself wore a weary look, as if the fight he had in hand were an uphill one. He had long recognised Conyngham; indeed the chase had been one of little excitement, but rather an exercise of patience and dogged perseverance. He raised his hat to indicate that the Englishman's gay salutations were perceived, and pulled the wide brim well forward again.

'He will change his att.i.tude when it becomes apparent who I am,' he muttered.

But Conyngham's first word would appear to suggest that Esteban Larralde was a much less impressive person than he considered himself.

'Why, it's the devout lover!' he cried. 'Senor Larralde, you remember me, Algeciras, and your pink love letter--deuced fishy love letter, that; nearly got me into a devil of a row, I can tell you.

How are you, eh?'