The Firebrand

"Nay, not so," said the Tia, soothingly; "every drop of the water you have drunk, Don Tomas. But it is your head, your poor head. I turned the poultice, and with the water he speaks of moistened the leaves afresh. And how, worthy Señors, is the dear lady? I trust, well. Ah! had she been left in my care, all had gone right with her!"

"In your care! In your care, hell-hag!" cried El Sarria, fiercely, taking a step threateningly towards her, "aye, the kind of safety my child would have experienced had that gentleman, your brother there, been allowed to finish his grave-digging business. Let me not hear another word out of your mouth, lest I do the world a service by cutting short a long life so ill-spent!"

The Tia took the hint and said nothing. But her eyes, cast up to the roof, and her hands spread abroad palm outwards, expressed her conviction that ever thus do the truly good and charitable suffer for their good deeds, their best acts being mistaken and misinterpreted, and their very lives brought into danger by the benevolence of their intentions.

Had Rollo but followed the direction of her gaze he might have had his doubts of La Giralda's theory of sunstroke to explain the signalling from the roof. For there, clearly to be seen out of the half-open trap-door, was a little scarlet strip of cloth stirred by the wind, and doubtless conspicuous from all the neighbouring hills about the village of Sarria.

But Rollo, eager to get to his task of arranging the transport for the evening, so that Dolóres might be taken in safety and comfort to the Convent of the Holy Innocents, was already turning to be gone, while Ramon Garcia, afraid to trust himself long in the same apartment with the traitor, stood outside fingering the key.

"Bring wine and water!" cried Rollo to La Giralda, "and, Don Luis, in an hour I will trouble you to take a little tour of the premises with me, just to show your men that all is right."

Luis Fernandez bowed slightly but said nothing, while the invalid from his couch whined feebly that all the water was for him. The others might have the wine or at least some of it, but he must have all the water.

So Rollo Blair and his companion withdrew into the cool guest-chamber of the mill-house without having seen the little waving strip of red upon the roof. As soon as they were gone, however, Don Luis leaped up, and with a long fishing-pole he flaunted a strip of white beside the red, waving it this way and that for a long time, till in the close atmosphere of the strong-room the sweat rained from him in great drops.

Then he leaped down at last, muttering, "If the General is within twenty miles, as I think he is, that ought to bring him to Sarria. The angels grant that he arrive in time" (here he paused a moment, and then added with a bitter smile), "or the devils either. I am not particular, so be that he come!"

CHAPTER XIX

SIGNALS OF STORM

A long strip of Moorish-looking wall and certain towers that glittered white in the sun, advertised to Rollo that he approached the venta of Sarria. Without, that building might have passed for the palace of a grandee; within – but we know already what it was like within.

Rollo was impatient to find his companions. He had just discovered that he had most scurvily neglected them, and now he was all eagerness to make amends. But the house-place of the Café de Madrid was tenanted only by the Valiant and a clean silently-moving maid, who solved the problem of perpetual motion by finding something to do simultaneously in the kitchen, out in the shady patio among the copper water-vessels, and up in the sleeping chambers above.

Rollo's questioning produced nothing but a sleepy grunt from Don Gaspar Perico.

"Gone – no! They had better not," he muttered, "better not – without paying their score – bread and ham and eggs, to say nothing of the noise and disturbance they had occasioned. The tallest was a spitfire, a dare-devil – ah, your excellency, I did not know – "

Here Don Gaspar the Valiant, who had been muttering in his beard more than half asleep, awoke suddenly to the fact that the dare-devil aforesaid stood before him, fingering his sword-hilt and twisting his moustache.

But he was a stout old soldier, this Gaspar Perico, and had a moustache of his own which he could finger with anybody.

"I crave your pardon, Señor," he said, rising and saluting, "I think I must have been asleep. Until this moment I was not aware of your honourable presence."

"My companions – where are they?" said Rollo, hastily. He had much on his mind, and wished to despatch business. Patience he had none. If a girl refused him he sprang into the first ship and betook himself to other skies and kinder maidens. If a battle went wrong, he would fight on to the death, or at least till he was beaten into unconsciousness. But of the cautious generalship which draws off in safety and lives to fight another day, Rollo had not a trace.

"Your companions – nay, I know nothing of them," said the veteran: "true it is he of the stoutness desired to buy my wine, and when I gave him a sample, fine as iced Manzanilla, strong as the straw-wine of Jerez, he spat it forth upon the ground and vowed that as to price he preferred the ordinary robbers of the highway!"

Rollo laughed a little at this description of John Mortimer's method of doing business, but he was eager to find his comrades, so he hastily excused himself, apologised for his companion's rudeness, setting it down to the Señor Mortimer's ignorance of the language, and turned to go out.

But as he passed into the arcaded patio of the inn, the silent maid-servant passed him with a flash of white cotton gown. Her grass shoes made no noise on the pavement. As she passed, Rollo glanced at her quickly and carelessly, as it was his nature to look at every woman. She was beckoning to him to follow her. There could be no doubt of that. She turned abruptly through a low doorway upon the top of which Rollo nearly knocked out his brains.

The Scot followed down a flight of steps, beneath blossoming oleander bushes, and found himself presently upon a narrow terrace-walk, divided from a neighbouring garden by a lattice of green-painted wood.

The silent maid-servant jerked her thumb a little contemptuously over her shoulder, elevated her chin, and turning on her heel disappeared again into her own domains.

Rollo stood a moment uncertain whether to advance or retreat. He was in a narrow path which skirted a garden in which fuchsias, geraniums, and dwarf palms grew abundantly. Roses also clambered among the lattice-work, peered through the chinks, and drooped invitingly over the top.

A little to the right the path bent somewhat, and round the corner Rollo could hear a hum of voices. It was in this direction also that the silent handmaid of Gaspar Perico's kitchen had jerked her thumb.

Rollo moved slowly along the path, and presently he came in sight of a pretty damsel on the farther side of the trellis paling, deeply engaged in a most interesting conversation. So far as he could see she was tall and dark, with the fully formed Spanish features, a little heavy perhaps to Rollo's taste, but charming now with the witchery of youth and conscious beauty.

Her hand had been drawn through one of the diamond-shaped apertures of the green trellis-work, which proved how small a hand it was. And, so far as the young Scot could judge from various contributory movements on the lady's part, it was at that moment being passionately kissed by some person unseen.

The low voice he had heard also proceeded from this fervent lover, and the whole performance made Rollo most unreasonably angry.

"What fools!" he muttered, turning on his heel, adding as an afterthought, "and especially at this time of day."

He was walking off in high dudgeon, prepared to give the silent maid a piece of his mind – indeed, a sample most unpleasing, when something in the tone of the lover's voice attracted him.

"Fairest Maria, never have I loved before," the voice was saying. "I have wandered the world heretofore, careless and heart-free, that I might have the more to offer to you, the pearl of girls, the all incomparable Maria of Sarria!"

The fair hand thrust through the lattices was violently agitated at this point. Its owner had caught sight of Rollo standing on the pathway, but the lover's grasp was too firm. As Rollo looked a head was thrust forward and downwards – as it were into the picture. And there, kneeling on the path, was Monsieur Etienne, lately Brother Hilario of Montblanch, fervidly kissing the hand of reluctant beauty.

As Rollo, unwilling to intrude, but secretly resolving to give Master Lovelace no peace for some time, was turning away, a sharp exclamation from the girl caused the kneeling lover to look up. She snatched her hand through the interstices of the palisades on the instant, fled upward through the rose and fuchsia bushes with a swift rustle of skirts, and disappeared into a neighbouring house.

Etienne de Saint Pierre rose in a leisurely manner, dusted the knees of his riding-breeches, twirled his moustache, and looked at Rollo, who stood on the path regarding him.

"Well, what in the devil's name brings you here?" he demanded.

The mirthful mood in which he had watched his comrade kneel was already past with Rollo.

"Come outside, and I will tell you," he said, and without making any further explanation or asking for any from Etienne, he strode back through the courtyard of the venta and out into the sunlit road.

A muleteer was passing, sitting sideways on his beast's back as on an easy-chair, and as he went by he offered the two young men to drink out of a leathern goatskin of wine with a courteous wave of the hand. Rollo declined equally courteously.

Then turning to his friend, who still continued to scowl, he said abruptly, "Where is Mortimer?"

"Nay, that I know not – looking for another meal, I suppose," answered the little Frenchman, shrugging his shoulders, one higher than the other.

Rollo glanced at him from under his gloomy brows.

"Nay," he said, "this is serious. I need your help. Do not fail me to-night, and help me to find Mortimer. I had not the smallest intention of intruding upon you. Indeed, but for that maid at the inn, I should never have found you."

"Ah," commented Etienne, half to himself, "so I owe it to that minx, do I? Yes, it is a mistake – so close as that. But no matter; what can I do for you?"

"It is not for myself," Rollo answered, and forthwith in a low voice told his tale, the Frenchman assenting with a nod of the head as each point was made clear to him.

Unconsciously they had strolled out of the village in the direction of the Convent of the Holy Innocents, and they were almost under its walls when the little Frenchman, looking up suddenly, recognised with a start whither he was being led.

"Let us turn back," he said hastily; "I have forgotten an engagement!"

"What, another?" cried Rollo. "If we stay here three days you will have the whole village on your hands, and at least half a dozen knives in your back. But if you are afraid of the Señorita Concha, I think I can promise you that she is not breaking her heart on your account!"

In spite of this assurance, however, Etienne was not easy in his mind till they had turned about and were returning towards the village. But they had not left the white walls of the Convent behind, before they were hailed in English by a stentorian voice.

"Here, you fellows," it said, "here's a whole storehouse of onions as big as a factory – strings and strings of 'em. I wanted to go inside to make an offer for the lot, and the old witch at the gate slammed it in my face."