Part 15

"I have some news for you, Mercy, but I can't tell you now. I must go." I was standing almost in the front of the box, between the two, and Mrs. Curwen said--

"Did you ever see such a scene? What a love that boy King is! I should like to kiss him."

I glanced then across at the Royal box, and to my discomfiture saw that his little Majesty was taking my advice, and, with an opera glass, was earnestly searching the audience. As I looked across, the glass was full upon our box. He started, lowered the glass, and looked eagerly at me. Then he turned to the Queen impetuously, said something to her, and handed her the glass; and she in her turn looked across the house at me.

He had recognised me, and I dare not stay another minute, for fear he should send to enquire for me. I turned to Mayhew, who was sitting by Mrs. Curwen.

"I want to speak to you, Silas. Come with me;" and, murmuring an excuse to the widow, we went out.

"Is anything wrong?" he asked anxiously.

"Yes, there's a devil of a mess, and I'm in it up to the neck, and I want you to help me. I've got a nasty job for you. I've had a telegram from London just now to say that my brother is dead. He was thrown from his horse this afternoon. Here's the wire."

"Then that name you sent in----" he began.

"I didn't use it because of that. But my own name has got mixed up with this infernal Carlist business, and I didn't dare send it in. Ferdinand Carbonnell may be proscribed at any moment, and I've scraped my shoulder already once this evening against a prison door. What I want you to do is to break this news of poor Lascelles' death as best you can to my sister, as soon as you get a chance, and just make them both understand that they're to know nothing of any Ferdinand Carbonnell. If I've been recognised here, as I think I have, and anyone comes questioning, just say I'm Lord Glisfoyle, and if they press for any address give them the Hotel de l'Opera."

"I don't quite understand. Why----"

"That's all right; I can't spare another second," and I hurried off, leaving him staring after me with the telegram in his hand, the very picture of bewilderment.

I walked quickly along the corridor, left the building, and turned at a quick speed in the direction of the Calle de Valencia, in search of Sarita. And when I found how much time I had lost through my visit to the Opera, I was troubled with serious misgivings.

*CHAPTER XIX*

*A CARLIST GATHERING*

The Calle de Valencia was a sufficiently important street to be well known, and I had no difficulty in finding it. It had a prosperous look; the houses were for the most part of a good size; and their condition and appearance suggested that the occupants were of the well-to-do class.

Madame Chansette had told me 47 was part of the number of the house I sought, and one of the first I saw being 147, I determined to try that first. It was a doctor's house--Dr. Pascual Vedia, and when I rang the bell a maid-servant opened the door, and showed me into a consulting room.

My nerves had been so wrought upon by the events of the day, the scene at the Opera, my fears for Sarita, and now by the extraordinary nature of my present mission, that this commonplace conventional reception seemed quite a ridiculous anti-climax. Despite all my anxiety I caught myself smiling when I was left alone.

"What an ass I am," I exclaimed; "as if I was to expect the long black conspirators' cloaks, the sharp daggers, slouched hats of picture books! This may very well be the place after all." My meditations were broken by the entrance of the doctor, a man of some forty years of age, with the most approved medical manner. A comfortable-looking person in complete keeping with his conventional surroundings, who smiled encouragingly while he looked me over with a professional eye. If he was a dangerous Carlist, danger and Carlism certainly appeared to agree with him.

"You wish to consult me, senor? My servant did not bring me your name." His manner was easy and insinuating.

"I have not called to consult you, but wish to see the Senorita Castelar, who is, I believe, here. I have grave and urgent news for her."

"I am afraid there is some mistake. My name is Pascual Vedia. I am a physician." It struck me he said this to look at me and gain time to think. There was just a second of hesitation; and then he added: "May I ask your name?"

"My name is of no importance if the senorita is not here. But the news I bring is of the utmost gravity--to her and others," and I emphasised the words with a glance of meaning. This time the pause before he replied was longer; then he answered--

"My wife has a few friends this evening, but the senorita is not here."

"You know her?" I asked quickly.

"Really, as I have not the pleasure of knowing your name----" and he left the sentence unfinished, with an uplifting of the hands. He was fencing with me, that was unmistakable. And, more than that, he was suspicious. When I saw that, the means of at once testing and reassuring him occurred to me. I looked him straight in the eyes, and very deliberately repeated the formula I had learned from Vidal de Pelayo.

"Counting all renegades lovers of Satan, by the grace of God."

"By the grace of God," he repeated instantly with deep earnestness, and gave me his hand. His manner underwent a remarkable change; his easy, matter-of-fact, medical practitioner air dropped like a mask, and his looks, eyes, and voice were charged with enthusiasm.

"I could not know, of course," he said, in explanation. "The senorita is here, but on the point of leaving. Will you come to her with me? Or shall I bring her here? You are from Saragossa--or, better, from Huesca? And all is well, I hope. We have been waiting for this."

His reply showed me there would be no danger of identification if I went with him, since it was clear that none of the men whom I had outwitted that afternoon had yet returned with the news. I was doubtful, moreover, whether Sarita would come to me without hearing my name, while if I sent it to her she might raise delay or difficulty.

I decided to go with him therefore, and he led me to a drawing-room at the back of the house where there were some dozen people. The eyes of all were turned upon us as the door opened, and the doctor, having misinterpreted my silence, exclaimed joyously--

"News at last from Saragossa!"

The words were not off his tongue before Sarita, who was sitting close to the door, jumped to her feet, looked at me in the deepest consternation, and, turning pale to the lips in the greatness of her surprise, faced me with a look of such unmistakable fear and dismay that it brought gathering clouds of suspicion to the faces of many of those present.

"You here!" she said at length, in a tone that was scarcely more than a whisper.

I paused for one supreme moment of doubt, while I glanced at the faces bent anxiously and now sternly upon me, and then answered in a firm voice--

"Where should Ferdinand Carbonnell be at the crisis of peril such as this, if not here?" and I looked at her as though daring her to betray the secret of the double meaning of my words.

The impression created by the announcement of my name was unmistakable. A murmur of astonishment passed from lip to lip, while glances were travelling backwards and forwards from me to Sarita, who stood battling with her agitation.

I could understand her trouble well enough. She had either to denounce me as an impostor and a traitor to the cause, and with probable consequences to me from which would shrink with fear; or she had to cover and confirm the fraud and vouch for my truth to her companions. To distract attention from her while she made her decision, I went on after a short pause, speaking deliberately and incisively, wishing to create the deepest impression possible--

"Only such an emergency as this could have induced me to throw aside my incognito and come to you openly. I bring you the worst possible news. Everything has failed; and the cause never stood in higher peril than at this present moment, when the success we have striven, worked, and fought for seemed actually in our grasp--seemed?--nay, was actually in our grasp. The great event of to-day, so cunningly planned, so patiently waited for, was successful. The young Pretender was captured by our comrades, and was actually in their hands; I myself was present--as I strive to be everywhere in the moment of crisis--and saw it done. They carried him away, and all seemed to have gone gloriously, when just before the village of Podrida was reached, by means which have yet to be discovered, the whole scheme was wrecked; our comrades were struck down, overborne probably, after fighting valiantly, by a vastly superior force." (I reckoned that this was the account of the rescue the men would be likely to bring back.) "The young Pretender was snatched from them and brought back to the capital. I returned when I knew of it, and I come now hot foot from the Opera, where he has just made a public appearance, amid the cheers of those sycophants among the people who persist in upholding his wrongful claim to Our Master's throne."

I did not look once at Sarita while delivering this harangue, and by the time I had reached that point the news I brought had not only convinced everyone of my sincerity, but had set them quaking on the score of their own safety.

"You saw this with your own eyes?" exclaimed the doctor, excitedly. "Holy Mother of God, what will it mean?"

"I saw it, and much more. I was this evening closeted in the house of the master fiend to whose devilment the wrecking of everything may well be due--the Minister, Sebastian Quesada. I heard there the order given for my own arrest. I saw the warrant for the arrest of Senorita Castelar, and heard the order for its instant execution given to his police spy, Rubio, and I know that lists upon lists of our friends' and comrades' names have been handed to the police with orders for their immediate arrest. While you have been sitting here in your snug council of plan-making and scheming"--I threw a good slice of contempt into the reference, for it is rarely ill to be a little contemptuous towards those whom you are seeking to impress and convince--"the streets without are resounding under the tread of armed men, broken by the wailing cries of hundreds of our brave friends, men and women martyrs alike, who are being hustled to gaol amid the curses and howls of the passion-ridden mob. Quesada's avowed policy is now to use this failed attempt of ours to stamp our cause under his feet, and to crush it so utterly that no vestige of strength remains. His plans have been maturing for weeks"--here again I glanced at Sarita--"and he has been deliberately working towards this end. For this he pretended to give us aid--the aid of a traitor--that by it he might find the means to further his own end. And that end was the doubly cunning one, to use us Carlists to overthrow the Monarchy, and then seize on our act as the pretext for crushing us into impotence."

The men present broke into bitter imprecations of Quesada, and for a time much confusion prevailed, as the party discussed the momentous news. I turned then to Sarita, by whose side the doctor was standing.

"What do you advise, senor?" he asked me anxiously.

"There is but one course, so far as we in Madrid are concerned. We cannot hope to resist. The present plans have failed hopelessly, and the one chance is to do what has had to be done before--bow to the tempest, and wait until it has passed. By this time hundreds of Carlists are crowding the gaols to overflowing, and to-morrow every known or suspected Carlist in the capital will be under lock and key, guarded by Quesada's agents. The one hope of safety for those who cannot clear themselves is in flight. Meanwhile every compromising document and paper should be destroyed or burned."

The panic was complete, and already most of those present were preparing to leave.

"Why did you venture here?" asked Sarita, as the doctor was called away. "What right had you to come and act this part and force me to play the traitor by keeping silence?"

"I came to save you; and my coming will have been in vain if you do not instantly leave the house with me. Every word I said of these doings is true, and it is true also that Quesada has denounced me as Ferdinand Carbonnell, the Carlist leader, and ordered my arrest in that character. I think I can save you yet, if you will fly at once."

"I will not go with you. I am not a coward."

"Then we will stay together and wait for the police to come to us."

"You must not stay. You shall not," she cried, quickly.

"I shall not leave you again."

"But you have no right here. You are not of us, and have no right to share our dangers. You shall not stay. I will tell them here that you are not one of us."

"They are too intent on saving themselves to bother about the nice little chain of circumstances which has linked my name to the cause. But as you will. I came to save you, and if I can't do that I don't care what happens. I left Madame Chansette overwhelmed with distress, and I only escaped from the house as the police agents entered it in search of you. I heard Quesada himself give the order for your immediate arrest. You must come. Quesada has only duped you as he has duped hundreds before you. And, mark you, when he gave that order, and when he was busy packing the gaols with Carlists, he believed that the King had actually been abducted. I know that; for I had it from his own lips. Surely you see his double cunning now."

"How do you know all you have told us?"

"I cannot tell you now; but I know it, and more. I believe, too, that I can bring this home to him. Many strange things have happened since I saw you yesterday, and with your help I can drag him down and can expose his treachery to the King as well as to you all. If you will not save yourself because I ask you, will you do it to help in punishing him?"

"I am not a coward to fly," she answered; but I could see that I had touched her. "I will denounce him."

"From where? From the inside of one of his prisons? As what? As a well-known leader of the Carlists? Think, Sarita, and for God's sake think quickly, for every minute may make your peril greater; and not yours only, but mine as well. What heed would be paid to anything a Carlist might say against him at such a moment?"

"I will come," she cried then, impetuously; and in a minute we had explained our intention to those who still remained, and left the house.

"Where are you going?" asked Sarita, when we reached the street.

"For to-night to the Hotel de l'Opera, where my sister is." I explained the position there, and then the change my brother's death had caused, and that I was no longer to be known as Ferdinand Carbonnell, but as Lord Glisfoyle; that the next day our whole party would leave Madrid, and that she and Madame Chansette would leave with us. "You can stay if you please in Paris, or anywhere out of Spain, and for the purpose of the escape we must decide in what character you will travel. That's as far as I've got with our plans, but no one will look for you in Mrs. Curwen's rooms at the hotel."

"I will not promise to leave Madrid," she said, firmly.

"Just as you please. No doubt Quesada can find a cell for each of us if we remain," I returned, pointedly. "If you stay, I stay, Sarita: on that I take my oath."

Without waiting for a reply, I told her rapidly so much of what had occurred since I had seen her as I deemed necessary: the quarrel with Livenza, the interview with Quesada, my discovery of his connivance in the Carlist plot, and that I had faced him with it, and then the scene at Quesada's house that evening; and I was at great pains to make it as clear as I could that all the Minister's plans were laid well in advance to deal this overwhelming blow at the Carlists, when the King had once been put away.

Told as the story was now, with all the evidence of police activity in full sight, and broken by more than one pause, as we had to stand aside to avoid the rush of the howling mob as some party of prisoners was dragged past us, it carried conviction.

"This is no chance work of an hour, Sarita. The plans have been ready and the preparations made for days past, merely waiting the signal. The very warrants under which these men and women here are being imprisoned have been lying ready signed in the pigeon-holes of Quesada's office, and the lists have been made out with scrupulous deliberation and method. This was the reception he had in readiness for the friends by whose deed he meant to climb. Success or failure was all one to him. If the plot had succeeded, he would have crushed you Carlists, to leave no one in his path; it has failed, and he can still use it to consolidate his power and strengthen his influence as a jealous Minister of the King. His treachery is the only true thing in him."

As we drew nearer the heart of the city, the throng in the streets increased, and the noise and din of the clamour were incessant. Something of the infection of the wonderful enthusiasm I had witnessed in the Opera had spread to the streets. It was known that the young King was unhurt, and had appeared there; and the vast crowds were giving tongue to their feelings in every key of frantic enthusiasm, vented now in roystering, rollicking shouts of loyalty, and again in fierce, wild curses upon the Carlists and all traitors. A scene to try the strongest nerves; and I was not surprised that even Sarita's courage began to fail, and she clung to my arm in apprehension.

There was cause indeed, for the mob was growing dangerous, and more than one ugly incident occurred close by us. The mere cry of "Carlist!" raised against either man or woman, was enough to bring the mob howling round like wolves scenting prey. And, as in all mobs, there were not wanting those who from motives of robbery or personal spite were ready to raise the cry, and so set light to the dangerous fires of violence.

Thus on one occasion we were standing back from the on-pressing crowd as a couple of prisoners were being taken by, when the cry of "Carlist spies!" was raised against a man and woman. It was started in the shrill tone of an old tatterdemalion hag who had begged an alms and had been refused. In an instant the two found themselves surrounded by a cursing, shouting, shrieking throng, their angry faces thrust forward in fierce denunciation, threateningly close to the pallid, fear-set features of the couple, and a hundred outstretched hands were quivering with the menace of violence. Someone gave the man a push from behind, and in a trice the two were separated, the man pulled, thrust, hustled, and whirled away like a leaf on the tempest of passionate ruthlessness, amid a war of oaths and curses; while by a chance the woman, forgotten in the instant of violence, drifted to us, and we let her creep in behind us and hide till the storm had passed.

A cry of "Carlist!" from below us soon carried the mob in search of the fresh victims, and we stood a minute, Sarita whispering to the woman to gather courage, as the danger was passed. And while we waited, the man who had been with her came back, helped by some friend who had found him battered, bruised, bleeding from a dozen hurts, and with the remnants of his clothing hanging on him in rags.

Sarita would have stayed to help the unfortunate pair, but the danger of the streets was too great, and I led her away.

The scene was repeated more than once, with variations mainly in the degree of violence used by the mob. More than once, too, we only just escaped finding ourselves in the midst of one of the innumerable street fights that occurred, where some man against whom the cry had been raised had friends, and, rallying them, shouted a counter charge against his accusers, and followed it up with an attack, in which knives were drawn freely on both sides and blood spilt.

Never was I more thankful in my life than when at length we reached the doors of the hotel, to which at last I had literally to force and fight my way through the mob still surging in the neighbourhood of the Opera House, and swarming all over the plaza where the hotel stood.

No sooner were we safe, however, and I stood a moment in the spacious hall of the hotel to recover my breath, than a fresh difficulty of a quite different character occurred to me. How should I explain matters in regard to Sarita to Mrs. Curwen and Mercy? I had scarcely mentioned her name to either of them; they knew nothing, of course, of the weird undercurrent of events; and yet here was I turning up with her at eleven o'clock at night, in defiance of all the conventionalities, and as the climax of a series of acts which must have appeared to them as the very type of eccentricity.

Besides, there was Mrs. Curwen's own undercurrent motive for her presence in Madrid.

*CHAPTER XX*

*AT THE HOTEL DE L'OPERA*

It is, of course, a very simple thing to laugh at the conventions, and to declare that it would be preposterous to give the least thought to them in the face of the really serious pass to which matters had come. I was trying to do that all the way to Mrs. Curwen's room as we followed the waiter, to whom I had given my name as Lord Glisfoyle.

But, as a matter of fact, I felt more nervous and uncomfortable at having to subject Sarita to the sharp inquisitive fire of the widow's eyes, than if I had been going to face a roomful of armed men. My companion saw my embarrassment.

"You are anxious how your sister will receive me?" she whispered with a quick discernment.

"My sister, Mercy, is one of the best, staunchest little souls in the world."

"Ah, then it is this friend of hers?"

"It will be all right," I answered evasively; and as the waiter threw the door open and announced me at that moment, there was no time to say any more. Our entrance could scarcely have been at a more inopportune moment. My sister had taken the news of Lascelles' death very badly, and was lying on a sofa overcome by grief. Mrs. Curwen was kneeling by her with scent and smelling salts, and Mayhew was standing near in the helpless attitude usual with men under such circumstances.

Mrs. Curwen did not get up or look round for a moment, but an exclamation from Mayhew, who recognised Sarita and bowed to her, and then stared at her with an expression of bewilderment, drew the widow's attention.

"Mercy is,"--she began in a tone of warning but glancing round, then seeing I was not alone, and that my companion was an exceedingly lovely girl, she stopped, jumped up and looked at Sarita with eyes and face that appeared to harden rapidly from surprised confusion to indignant anger. She seemed instinctively to divine enough of the case between Sarita and myself to make her exceedingly uneasy and angry; and she was never in the habit of concealing her feelings.

"I have brought my cousin, Senorita Castelar, who is at this moment in deep trouble, Mrs. Curwen, to ask you and Mercy to help her." I must admit Sarita did not wear the appearance of trouble to bear out my words. She met Mrs. Curwen's most sarcastic look with one of almost queenly hostility, held her head high and had a light in her flashing eyes which augured ill for peace.

"Any friend of yours is welcome, of course,"--oh, the sting of that "of course," and the wicked bow that accompanied it--"but the hour is very late and unfortunately Mercy is prostrated with grief at the terrible news which you left to Mr. Mayhew to tell us. Will you be seated, senorita?" Mayhew glanced across at me, shrugged his shoulders very slightly, and then like, a good fellow plunged in to the rescue.