The Firebrand

The monk shrugged his shoulders with a pitying gesture and looked from one to the other.

"I am an old dragoon," he said, "and under the guidons of El Gran' Lor' I have seen the like. It is none of my business, of course, but all the same it is a pity. I should be happier to leave you watching the slumbers of the Princess!"

"Ah!" cried Concha, earnestly, "if you are indeed an old soldier, and a good one under guidon or holy cross – for this time let me be one also!"

"You are young – I pray you, think!" urged the Basque. "There is great danger! Look at that maid yonder, and what she hath brought on herself."

"Ah," said Concha, softly – so softly indeed as to be almost inaudible, "but the difference is that she did this thing for hate – while – I – I – "

She did not finish her sentence, but raising her eyes, wet with seldom-coming tears, to those of the stern-faced brother, she said instead, "Give me the dress and let us be gone. The sun is rising!"

"If you are indeed determined, you shall have that of Brother Domingo," said Teodoro; "he was of little more than your height, and died, not of the plague, but simply from doing his duty."

"Then let me die in no other way!" said Concha, putting it on as happily as another maiden might dress for a ball.

These three went out to their terrible task, and as they were harnessing the bullock cart once more and spreading a clean cloth over it, Rollo, moved in his heart of hearts, came near. Never did two such lovers as they meet more strangely arrayed. Yet he laid his black gauntlet across her arm and whispered a word which Brother Teodoro did not hear, being, as he took good care to be, much busied about the straps and harnessings.

"I do not think that Love will let us die – yet!" he said.

"That is a prayer. Amen!" said Concha, in a whisper, lifting her eyes to his.

It was a strange betrothing, and little said. But when at last he put the ox-goad in her hands, Concha knew that the night had indeed passed away and that the morning was come.

CHAPTER XXXIX

A HANDFUL OF ROSES

Patiently and softly went the oxen about the little pottage garden of the friars, till, where the soil was sandiest and the ground most open, under a south-looking wall on which the roses were still clustering (for they grow roses late at La Granja), lo! a trench was dug. It was not so deep as a rich man's grave in other countries, but in Spain as elsewhere a little earth covers a multitude of sorrows.

The long shallow trench had been the last work of the two remaining monks ere they departed to their duty in the stricken village. Savage men, heathen of heart and cruel of hand, might await them there. Black plague would certainly lurk in every doorway. Yet these two brothers, simple in the greatness of their faith – not of the wise of the land, not of the apparent salt of the earth, but only plain devout men, ignorant of all beyond their breviaries and their duty to their fellows – had gone forth as quietly and unostentatiously as a labouring man shoulders his mattock and trudges to his daily toil.

Of the three that remained, Brother Teodoro did his best; but in spite of his endeavours the bulk of the work fell to Rollo and Concha. Yet under the page's dress and the rude outer slough of tarred canvas the girl's heart sang. There was nothing terrible in death when he and she together lifted the spent stuff of mortality and laid it in its last resting-place. Without a shudder she replaced a fallen face-cloth. With Rollo opposite to her she took the feet of the dead that had guarded them so well in the red morning light, and when all were laid a-row in the rest which lasts till the Judgment Day, and before the first spadeful of earth had fallen, Concha, with a sudden impulse, took a kerchief from her neck, and plucked a double handful of the roses that clustered along the wall. They were white roses, small, but of a sweet perfume, having grown in that high mountain air. Then without a word, and while the monk was still busy with his prayers for the dead, she sprang down to where at the corner opposite to Brother Domingo the daughter of Muñoz had been laid, the pinched fierceness of her countenance relaxed into a strange far-away smile.

Concha spread the kerchief tenderly over the face of the girl, dropping tears the while. And she crossed the little hands which pain and madness had driven to deeds of darkness and blood, upon the breast in which the angry young heart had beaten so hotly, and scattered the white roses over all.

Then while the Basque Teodoro did his office over his dead brother, Concha kneeled at the foot of the trench, a little crucifix in her hand. Her lips moved as she held the rude image of the Crucified over that fierce little head and sorely tortured body. He who had cast out so many devils, would surely pardon and understand. So at least she thought. Rollo watched her, and though brought up to be a good Presbyterian by his father, he knew that this little foolish Concha must yet teach him how to pray.

"God may hear her before the other, who knows!" he murmured. "One is a man praying for men – she, a maiden praying for a maid!"

Then Rollo made the girl, whom the scene had somewhat overwrought, go off to a secluded part of the garden and wash in the clean cool water of a fountain, while he remained to shovel in the soil and pack it well down upon the bodies of the dead who had served his purpose so faithfully. Last of all he unyoked and fed the oxen, leaving them solemnly munching their fodder, blinking their meek eyes and ruminating upon the eternal sameness of things in their serene bovine world. He came out, stripped himself to the skin, and washed in one of the deserted kitchens from which Brother Domingo, sometime almoner and cook to the Ermita of San Ildefonso, had for ever departed.

This being completed to his satisfaction, he went out to find Concha, who, her face radiant with the water of the Guadarrama (and other things which the young morning had brought her), met him as he came to her through the wood.

She held up her face to be kissed as simply and naturally as a child. Death was all about them, but of a truth these two lived. Yea, and though they should die ere nightfall, still throughout the eternities they might comfort themselves, in whatsoever glades of whatsoever afterworlds they might wander, that on earth they had lived, and not in vain.

For if it be true that God is Love, equally true is it that love is life. And this is the secret of all things new and old, of Adam and Eva his wife, of Alpha and Omega, of the mystic OM, of the joined serpent, of the Somewhat which links us to the Someone.

It was now Rollo's chiefest desire to get back to the palace and find out what had happened there during his absence. He had heard the rattle of musketry fire again and again during the night, and he feared, as much from the ensuing silence as from the escape of the daughter of Muñoz, that some disaster must have occurred there. He would have started at once to reconnoitre, but Brother Teodoro, hearing of his intention, volunteered to find out whether the gipsies had wholly evacuated the neighbourhood.

There was a private path from the grounds of the Hermitage which led into those of the palace. By this the Basque hastened off, and it was no long time before he returned, carrying the news that not only was the town clear and the gardens of the palace free from marauders, but that Rollo's people were still in full possession of La Granja. He had even been able to speak with one of the royal servants for an instant, a man with whom he had some acquaintance. But this conference, the Basque added, had been hastily interrupted by a certain old woman of a fierce aspect, who had ordered the young man off. Nevertheless he had gained enough information to assure him that there would now be no danger in the whole party returning openly to the Palace of La Granja.

Accordingly Rollo set out, with Concha still wrapt in the cloak which covered her page's dress. Rollo would gladly have carried the little Princess, but Isabel had taken so overwhelming a fancy to Concha that she could not be induced to quit her side for a moment. Indeed, she declared her intention of leaving her mother and Doña Susana and returning to Aranjuez with Concha so soon as her message should be delivered.

Rollo whispered that the pretended page should not discourage this sudden devotion, since in the journey that still lay before them the willingness of the little Princess to accompany them might make all the difference between success and failure.

The Sergeant received them at the garden door, which he had so carefully watched all night. There was a kindlier look than usual upon his leathern and saturnine features.

"I judge, Señor," he said, as he saluted Rollo, "that you have more to tell me than I have to tell you."

"In any case, let me hear your story first," said Rollo; "mine can keep!"

"In brief, then, having your authority," began the Sergeant, "I permitted his Excellency the Duke of Rianzares to have an interview with his daughter, at which, for safety's sake, I was present, and gained a great deal of information that may be exceedingly useful to us in the future. But in one thing I confess that I was not sufficiently careful. The girl, being left to herself for a moment, escaped – by what means I know not. Nor" (this with a quaint glance at Concha) "was she the only lady who left the palace that night without asking my leave!"

But without answering, the cloaked page passed him rapidly, and with the Princess still clinging to her hand, she passed upstairs. The Sergeant looked after her and her young charge.

"You are sure of this lady's discretion?" he said.

"I have proved it to the death," answered the young man briefly and a little haughtily.

The Sergeant shrugged his shoulders as if he would have said with the Basque friar, "It is none of my business." But instead he took up his report to his superior and continued, "We buried the body of the poor woman Doña Susana within the precincts of the Colegiata– "

"And an hour ago I buried the body of her slayer," said Rollo, calmly.

For an instant the Sergeant looked astonished, as indeed well he might, but he restrained whatever curiosity he felt, and only said:

"You will let me hear what happened in your own time, and also how you discovered and regained the little Princess?"

Rollo nodded.

"And speaking of the Princess, if she asks questions," continued Cardono, "had she not better be told that Doña Susana has gone to visit her relations – which, as she was the last of her family, is, I believe, strictly true!"

"But the Queen-Regent and the Duke – Señor Muñoz, I mean?" queried Rollo. "What of them?" For the young man had even yet no high opinion of that nobleman or of his vocation in life.

"Oh, as to the Duke," answered the Sergeant, "I do not think that we shall have much trouble with him. The Queen is our Badajoz. She is so set on returning to Madrid that she will not move a step towards Aragon, and we have not enough force to carry her thither against her will with any possibility of secrecy."

"We might take the little Princess alone," mused Rollo; "she would go with Concha anywhere. Of that I am certain."

The Sergeant shook his head.

"The Queen-Regent, and she alone, is the fountain of authority. If you kidnap and sequester her within the Carlist lines, you will certainly paralyse the government of Madrid. Especially you may prevent the sweeping away of the monasteries – which, I take it, is at the bottom of all this pother, though for the life of me I cannot see what concern the matter is of yours. But to carry off the Princess would profit you nothing. Isabel Segunda is but a child, and will not come of age for many years. Your friend the Abbot would gain nothing by her captivity. But the Queen-Regent were a prize indeed!"

After he had spoken thus freely, Rollo continued to muse, and the Sergeant to watch him. The latter had a great opinion of this young man's practical ability.

"If he had had but the fortune to be born poor – and in Andalucia, he might have been one day as great as I!" was the opinion of this modest Sergeant. And indeed he spoke but the words of truth and soberness. For it was the opinion of nine out of ten of his countrymen that he, José Maria of Ronda, was the greatest man of all time.

"Well," said Rollo at last, "let us go up and talk a little to my friends and El Sarria. I think I see a way of inducing her Royal Highness to accompany us. But it will require some firmness, and even a certain amount of severity."

The Sergeant nodded with grim appreciation.