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Updated: August 9, 2024
In the passage stood a man of middle height, hard and wiry, with those lines in his face that time neither obliterates nor deepens; the parallels of hunger. He had been through the first Carlist war nearly thirty years earlier. He had starved in Pampeluna, the hungry, the impregnable. Sarrion shook hands with him and passed into the room.
Had they had artillery they could have effectually held this strong and narrow place. It now became apparent that they were a woefully small detachment. They could not spare men to take up positions on the rocky hillside behind them. There was a pause. The Carlists were waiting for their skirmishers to come in from heights above the road. Sarrion and Juanita stood at the edge of the terrace.
"The chapel is there, but the door is built up," said Sarrion pointing to a doorway which had been filled in. And they paused for a moment as all men must pause when they find sudden evidence that that Sword which was brought into the world nineteen hundred years ago is not yet sheathed.
Chance favoured him, for a man with tired horses stopped his carriage to inquire if that were the Count Marcos de Sarrion. He had brought Juanita to Saragossa in his carriage, not with Sor Teresa, but with the Mother Superior of the school and two other pupils. He had been dismissed at the Plaza de la Constitucion, and the ladies had taken another carriage.
"There is a service in the Cathedral of La Seo tomorrow evening," he announced suddenly at midnight one night on his return from a long and tiring day. "All the girls of the convent schools will be there." "Ah!" said Sarrion, looking his son up and down with a speculative eye. "Well?" "My aunt... Sor Teresa... is likely to be there. She has returned to Saragossa to-day.
"Because they are poor?" inquired Sarrion, who did not move a step in response to Evasio Mon's lead. "Partly," admitted Mon, holding up one finger. "Because, my friend, none but the foolish are poor in this world." "Then why has the good God sent so many fools into the world?" "Because He wants a few saints, I suppose."
And Juanita knelt on the road while he laid his hand on her hair with a smile half amused and half pathetic. He looked twenty years younger than Sarrion, and laying aside his sacerdotal manner as suddenly as he had assumed it on Juanita's instinctive initiation, he helped her into the carriage with a grave and ceremonious courtesy. "This is your own carriage," she said when they were all seated.
"Will you keep him in the library make the excuse that the sun is too hot on the verandah until I am gone?" said Marcos. "I will follow and, at all events, see that she arrives safely at Pampeluna." Sarrion gave a curt laugh. "We may be able," he said, "to turn to good account Evasio's conviction that you are ill in bed, when in reality you are in the saddle." "He will soon find out."
Sor Teresa and Juanita are both well and in the school in the Calle de la Dormitaleria. Mon has been here for some weeks, but went to Madrid four days ago. It is an open secret that Pacheco will go over to the Carlists with his whole army corps for cash down but he will not take a promise. The Carlists think that their opportunity has come." "And so do I," said Sarrion.
"What did you intend to do on your arrival in Saragossa if you had not met us?" he asked. "I should have gone to the Casa Sarrion to warn your father or yourself that Juanita had been taken from my control and that I did not know where she was." "And then?" inquired Marcos. "And then I should have gone to Torrero," she answered with a smile at his persistence; "where I intend to go now.
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