Chapter IX The Quesada Version
At the Minister’s house the cordiality of my reception by both brother and sister was almost embarrassing in its warmth. The Minister was effusive, elaborate, and demonstrative; the sister gentle, solicitous, and intensely earnest in her gratitude. She pressed my hands, thanked me in simple, sincere phrases, but left her gratitude to be expressed chiefly through her eloquent eyes, which were constantly upon me. She had taken a quite exaggerated view of my act, was bent upon setting me up for a hero, and appeared to be resolved to act up to her ideal view of the case.
The Minister was an excellent talker, and, taking the burden of the conversation upon himself, proved himself a most entertaining companion. The one personal touch during dinner was in regard to his previous hint at our relationship.
“Did you understand that hint I dropped yesterday about there being some connection between our families?” he asked.
“Well, yes and no,” I replied. “I have had some kind of hint from my father, but I don’t know exactly the details.”
“It is in some respects a painful story, and one we rarely, if ever, speak of; indeed, it is known to but very few people. But this is a family conclave, and if we may not open the cupboard of the skeleton—as you English very grimly say—who may? By the way, how excellently you speak Spanish. I should not know you for any but a Spaniard.”
“I was many years as a youth in Spain.”
“You have a wonderful idiom; eh, Dolores?”
“I thought Senor Carbonnell was a countryman at first,” she said, her eyes and face lighting as if that were a rare virtue of mine.
“No, Dolores, you were wrong there. What he did for you was English work. Had he been our countryman he would have been talking, gesticulating, and scolding the rabble. But, instead, he acted. There was one thing possible to do, and with British practicality he saw it and did it instantly. No one but an Englishman would have thought of it. A Frenchman would have rushed to the door and defied the crowd; but that wouldn’t have saved you. A German might have thought of what Carbonnell did; but he’d have been only half-way round the carriage by the time Carbonnell had the door open and had whisked you out. One of these confounded Americans might have done it—but he’d have tried to dash through the crowd, in at the wrong door and out at the right—too much in a hurry to go round the carriage first. He’d have done it, however. But it was the English character to see just what to do, and how to do it most easily, and then to do it in the same moment.”
“You are still resolved to make too much of it,” I cried, with a laugh at his comparisons.
“Can we make too much of a cause that brings us a new friend, and, indeed, a new relative of such mettle? What think you, Dolores?”
“I think too much for mere words. Senor Carbonnell will feel, I am afraid, that I am very clumsy with my thanks.”
“You were speaking about relationship?” I put in, as a diversion.
“It makes a sorry page in our family history; for in truth we committed a series of blunders. Your grandfather had three sons, Carbonnell; and the youngest of them—I fear something of a scapegrace—settled here in Madrid under the name of Castelar, fell in love with my father’s youngest sister, Sarita, and married her against the wishes of all our family. You see we regarded him as an adventurer, knowing nothing of his being an Englishman and the son of an English peer. Besides, there was the religious difficulty, I was a lad at the time, about ten or twelve—it’s five-and-twenty years ago now—and remember the thing only vaguely; but I know I was as indignant as the rest of us;” and he laughed, frankly and openly.
“The marriage was a very disastrous one, I have heard,” said I.
“Very. Could not have been worse; and we did not learn who your uncle really was until after his wife’s death. She died professing herself bitterly sorry for her disobedience to the family wishes, and was reconciled to us; but the children——” and he tossed up a hand as though the trouble were too great for words.
“I have seen Sarita Castelar,” I said; and the remark brought one of those lightning gleams from his eyes which I had seen before.
“Have you seen the brother, Ramon?” he asked, changing instantly to a smile. “He should prove interesting to you, if you knew all. But they both harbour the worst opinion of me; and Ramon’s opinions have taken the pointed and substantial shape of a dagger thrust uncomfortably close to my heart, and a bullet that proved him, fortunately for me, a very poor shot. But I could not endure that, and when we catch him he will have his opportunities of pistol practice cut short.” He made light of the matter in his speech, but there was that in his looks which told plainly how bitterly and intensely he hated.
“Don’t speak of it, Sebastian,” cried Dolores, shuddering.
“I’m afraid our relationship is a little indefinite,” I said. “My uncle married your aunt, and we are therefore—what?”
“Staunch friends, I hope, Carbonnell; closer friends, I trust, than many relatives are.”
“With all my heart I hope that too, senor,” declared Dolores, and soon after she and Senora Torella, who had scarcely said a word in Quesada’s presence, left us. As soon as we were alone and had lighted our cigars, my host returned to the subject of the Castelars, and his open, unembarrassed manner of dealing with it surprised me.
“You have seen Sarita Castelar, you say, Carbonnell? She is a very beautiful girl, don’t you think?” and his keen eyes were watching my face as I answered.
“Unquestionably. One of the most beautiful I have ever seen.”
“It is a coincidence, too, is it not?—she is the image of her mother in looks; you are not at all unlike your uncle in looks, and you speak Spanish like a—as well as he did; you are here in Madrid. It would be a strange coincidence if the parallel was to be carried a stage farther.”
“And I were to fall in love with her and marry her, you mean?” If he could bluff, so could I; and in neither my laugh nor my face was there a trace of anything but apparent enjoyment of a rich absurdity. But it required no lynx eye to see that he did not enjoy my completion of his suggested parallel. “I’m afraid she’d have a poor sort of future. We younger sons of poor peers are not as a rule millionaires. But she is a very beautiful girl.”
“She is a very extraordinary one, and her brother has had far too much influence with her. I fear sometimes——” he left the sentence unfinished, pursed his lips, and shook his head dubiously.
“By the way, she and Madame Chansette—who is, I believe, your late father’s sister—are hopeful that the family will restore the property which I understand belongs to Sarita’s mother and should have gone to her children.”
“Say rather you don’t understand, Carbonnell,” he cried, laughing and shaking his head. “The good and amiable Chansette has what you English call a bee in her bonnet on that subject; and unfortunately the two children share the delusion. Why, if there was such property I should surely know of it; do you think I should not positively hail the chance of providing adequately for Sarita? Not for Ramon, perhaps. That I grant you. The young dog deserves the whip and worse. My very life is not safe while he is at liberty. But Sarita—why, I like the child. I call her child, although she is four-and-twenty; but as I am seven-and-thirty, and she has always been a child in my thoughts, she seems so now. Wonderfully pretty, wilful, disobedient, resentful, always irresistibly charming, but still a child. Don’t take her seriously, Carbonnell; for she is just the type of woman, when taken seriously, for whom men rush even to the gates of hell.”
“Then there is no such property?” I asked, quietly.
“How like the practical, pertinacious, dogged Englishman!” he exclaimed, laughing airily. “No, there is no such property, Carbonnell; and anyone who married Sarita Castelar must be content with her beauty as her sole dower.” It was impossible to resist the impression that under the words, lightly spoken and with an easy laugh, there lay a sneer and a caution for me. It was the first note of his voice that had not rung true in my ears.
“I am glad to have had that assurance, Senor Quesada,” I answered, gravely. “My father charged me to see into the matter and I will report to him exactly what you say.” We spoke no more then on the subject, and soon after we had joined Dolores and her duenna, her brother excused himself on the plea of State papers to read.
After an hour or so of music and chatter, in which Dolores showed herself not only a beautiful singer but a most charming little hostess, the Minister came back to us, and did everything that lay in his power to make me feel that in him I had found a sincere friend. But Mayhew’s warning, my previous knowledge of Quesada’s acts and character, and more than all the sentence of his which had sounded false in my ears, had completely changed my thoughts toward him, and I caught myself more than once listening for the proofs of his falseness even when he was making his loudest professions of good-will and friendship. And I went home saturated with the belief that he was, as Mayhew had declared, a most dangerous man.
As a consequence, I did not believe a word of his version of the story about the Castelars and their property, but rather that he was concealing the facts for his own purposes; and it gave me more than one twinge of uneasiness during the three or four weeks which followed that, despite my feeling toward him, I should have encouraged his persistently maintained efforts to make friend and even close associate of me.
These efforts were indeed a source of constant surprise to me. I was an obscure nobody in Madrid; and yet his overtures could not have been more cordial and earnest had I been the heir to a dukedom or a throne. He invited me constantly to his house, would send me messages to go riding or driving with him, and indeed overwhelmed me with attentions. In truth it seemed to me he was so overdoing his part, supposing it to be mere playacting, that I was almost persuaded he must have some genuine personal interest in me. Certainly he did his utmost to make the time a pleasant one for me, and if I could only have had better news of Sarita, I could not have failed to enjoy myself.
But all the time I did not once get sight of her. When I called on Madame Chansette, Sarita would never see me. She was away from Madrid often, that good lady told me, and would not even hear my name spoken.
“I thought you would be such friends,” she wailed dismally more than once; “but Sarita is so wilful. I suppose you quarrelled; why, I can’t imagine. I am sure you like her, and in the first day or two when you came, your praises were never out of her mouth. But I can’t understand her.”
“Couldn’t we arrange somehow for me to meet her?” I suggested, presuming on the old lady’s good nature; for my heart had warmed at the unexpected avowal.
“She would never forgive me,” was her instant and timid reply.
“She need never know,” said I. “I will manage that. Let me know where I am likely to see her, say at eight o’clock this evening, and I’ll take the risk of walking straight to her. I will come as if with news for you, and will take my chance.”
“Why are you so anxious?” she asked, sharply.
“Because I love her, Madame Chansette, and her safety is more to me than my own life. Now that we know Sebastian Quesada will give up nothing”—I had told her of my talk with him—“it is more than ever necessary for her to leave Madrid and abandon this wild business of intrigue.”
“You will never persuade her.”
“I can at least try;” and after a very little more persuasion she agreed and we arranged a surprise visit for that evening. I went home with pulses beating high in anticipation, and found news awaiting which would make one part of the plan genuine at least.
I should have news for Madame Chansette, and for Sarita. My father was dead. He had died suddenly, a telegram from Lascelles told me, and I was summoned home with all speed.
I rushed at once to the Embassy, obtained leave of absence, and made my preparations to leave for London that night; scribbled a note to Quesada putting off an engagement with him for the following day and set off for Madame Chansette’s house, with an overwhelming desire to see Sarita before leaving Spain.
The simple device effected its purpose well. The front door was open and with a word to the servant I hurried past to the room where I thought I should find Sarita. I paused just a moment before opening the door, caught my breath hurriedly, and turned the handle and entered.
She was there and alone, reading with her back to the door, and thinking probably that it was Madame Chansette she took no notice of my entrance. Then I perpetrated a very thin trick.
“Ah, dear Madame Chansette, I come with grave news;” I got thus far when Sarita jumped to her feet and faced me with eyes flashing and cheeks a-flush.
“How dare you come here?” she cried; speaking in English to emphasise more distinctly the gulf between us.
“Sarita!” I exclaimed, as though in deep surprise; but I kept by the door intending to prevent her escape; and I feasted my hungry eyes upon her glowing beauty.
“My aunt is not here, sir. You must have seen that for yourself the instant you entered. Why then this absurd pretence?”
“Because I would ten thousand times rather see you than Madame Chansette; because I must see you; because—any reason you like. I am too delighted at having at last caught you to care for reasons. You have been avoiding me for many days. Why?” I replied in Spanish, but she kept to English, which she spoke with great fluency.
“Because I do not wish to see you, Mr. Carbonnell. You will please be good enough now to go away.” She spoke in her coldest and loftiest tone. “I desire to be alone.”
“No, I shall not go away without an explanation. Why have you avoided me purposely for all this time?”
“I have given you the reason. I have had no wish to see you.”
“Thank you for your bluntness; but you must carry it a stage further and tell me why.”
“Certainly. Because on a former occasion you rendered your presence objectionable to me,” she returned in the same cold, level tone.
“I am going to be very rude and objectionable again, Sarita, and ask you not to tell half a truth and then plume yourself on having said something particularly disagreeable;” and I laughed. “I decline to accept that explanation. The truth is that you have been very angry with me, and I think your anger has lasted long enough—far too long, indeed, for relatives and such friends as you and I must be.”
“Insult is scarcely the badge which friendship wears,” she exclaimed, changing to Spanish in her impetuosity.
“Good. That’s a distinct improvement on your cold assumption of callous indifference. Whatever may be your real feeling for me, at least I am sure it is not indifference.”
“No, I have told you; you have made yourself objectionable to me,” she flashed with spirit.
“Because I told you I would thwart your wrongful intention in regard to the young King. I am still of the same mind.”
“I told you you were no friend of mine from that minute, and should never set eyes on me again,” she cried, vehemently.
“And here I am, nevertheless, looking at you with eyes of regret that you have treated me in this way.”
“I could not prevent your forcing yourself upon me. I meant never with my consent; and I presumed you would observe the common decencies of conduct sufficiently not to force yourself upon me in this way.”
“I am sure you never thought that if the chance came my way of seeing and speaking to you, I should be such a traitor to my own wishes as not to use it. But I am here, and have not come to quarrel. I have come with news that may interest even you—for it is bad news for me, and of much trouble.”
She glanced at me, and seemed as if to repudiate the intentional ungenerosity of my words; but said nothing, and, shrugging her shoulders, turned away; and, after a moment’s pause, substituted a retort, keeping her face averted.
“Why not carry your news where you will find sympathy?”
“You mean?”
“To my enemies, but your new friends. The Quesadas, brother and sister, will surely bind up your wounds best. What their friends suffer can scarcely concern me.” I heard this with a tingling sense of pleasure, for it told me much more than Sarita intended.
“I have been to Sebastian Quesada largely on your business.”
“You have at least had ample opportunities, and have made the most of them. I should congratulate you upon your successful knight-errantry, too.” She said this with a scornful shrug of the shoulders, and a delightful curl of the lip. Was it really possible she had disliked my visits to the Quesadas because I had helped Dolores out of the crowd that day?
“At any rate, my news will have the result you have wished for, Sarita. My father is dead, and I am leaving Madrid to-night.” I watched her closely as I spoke, and saw her start slightly, bite her lip, and draw herself together. It did touch her, it seemed, although she was unwilling to show it. After a moment she turned and said, with an effort to be very formal:
“I am very sorry for your personal sorrow.”
“Will you shake hands now, Sarita?” I said, going towards her.
“We are not children,” she returned quickly.
“I am going away”—and I held out my hand.
“Good-bye.” She put hers into mine, and I captured it and held it firmly.
“I am going away—but I shall come back again.” She tried to snatch her hand from mine at this, but I held it, and, looking into her face, said firmly, “I will not part in anything but good-will, Sarita. And when I come back to Madrid it must be to find you still my friend. Don’t let any cloud come between us. There is no need. God knows I would rather have your good-will than that of anyone else on earth. Don’t you believe this?”
“You had better not come back. It can do no good,” she said. “You have taken sides against me; you set yourself to thwart me in my chiefest wishes; your closest friends are my bitterest enemies. You know this. You know the wrongs they have done me and mine, and yet you make them your friends. It is nothing to me, of course, whom you choose for your friends, but—you choose them.” She looked up and tried to smile as though I had convicted myself.
“Do you really think these people, brother or sister, are anything to me? That their acquaintance or friendship, or whatever you term it, would weigh a hair’s weight with me against your good-will, Sarita?”
“There are very few in Madrid who would think slightingly of the friendship of such a man as Sebastian Quesada.”
“There is one man in Madrid who would give it up without a thought to secure the friendship of Sarita Castelar.”
“Yes; but you make my friendship impossible; you kill it with your violent hostility to my work.”
“I shall be away I don’t know how long—a week, two weeks, a month may be—but I’ll make a suggestion. Let us both use the time to try and think out a solution of that difficulty—how to be friends even while enemies of that kind. We are not children, as you said just now.”
She shook her head, still declaring that it was impossible; but she smiled as she said it, and the hardness and anger were gone from her voice, so that when I pressed the point, as I did with all the earnestness at command, she yielded; and when Madame Chansette came into the room some minutes later, she was as intensely surprised as she was pleased to find us both shaking hands over the bargain.
The thought that a complete reconciliation was in the making sent me off on my journey with a much lighter heart than I should otherwise have carried, and I set myself diligently to work to try and think of some means of saving Sarita in spite of herself.