The Velvet Glove Read online

  Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Robert Prince, andthe Online Distributed Proofresding Team

  THE VELVET GLOVE

  By

  Henry Seton Merriman(HUGH STOWELL SCOTT)

  Contents:

  I. IN THE CITY OF THE WINDSII. EVASIO MONIII. WITHIN THE HIGH WALLSIV. THE JADE--CHANCEV. A PILGRIMAGEVI. PILGRIMSVII. THE ALTERNATIVEVIII. THE TRAILIX. THE QUARRYX. THISBEXI. THE ROYAL ADVENTUREXII. IN A STRONG CITYXIII. THE GRIP OF THE VELVET GLOVEXIV. IN THE CLOISTERXV. OUR LADY OF THE SHADOWSXVI. THE MATTRESS BEATERXVII. AT THE INN OF THE TWO TREESXVIII. THE MAKERS OF HISTORYXIX. COUSIN PELIGROSXX. AT TORRE GARDAXXI. JUANITA GROWS UPXXII. AN ACCIDENTXXIII. KIND INQUIRIESXXIV. THE STORMY PETRELXXV. WAR'S ALARMXXVI. AT THE FORDXXVII. IN THE CLOUDSXXVIII. LE GANT DE VELOURSXXIX. LA MAIN DE FERXXX. THE CASTING VOTE

  List of Illustrations:"'ARE YOU SURE YOU HAVE NOT HEARD FROM PAPA?'""A MOMENT LATER THE TRAVELER WAS LYING THERE ALONE.""ALL TURNED AND LOOKED AT HIM IN WONDER.""'DO YOU INTEND TO PUNISH YOUR FATHER'S ASSASSINS?'""MARCOS WAS ESSENTIALLY A MAN OF HIS WORD.""THE DOOR WAS OPENED BY A STOUT MONK.""'HE IS NOT KILLED,' SAID MARCOS, BREATHLESSLY.""HE LEFT JUANITA ALONE WITH MARCOS."

  CHAPTER I

  IN THE CITY OF THE WINDSThe Ebro, as all the world knows--or will pretend to know, being anignorant and vain world--runs through the city of Saragossa. It is ariver, moreover, which should be accorded the sympathy of thisgeneration, for it is at once rapid and shallow.

  On one side it is bordered by the wall of the city. The left bank is lowand sandy, liable to flood; a haunt of lizards in the summer, of frogs inwinter-time. The lower bank is bordered by poplar trees, and here andthere plots of land have been recovered from the riverbed for tillage andthe growth of that harsh red wine which seems to harden and thicken themen of Aragon.

  One night, when a half moon hung over the domes of the Cathedral of thePillar, a man made his way through the undergrowth by the riverside andstumbled across the shingle towards the open shed which marks thelanding-place of the only ferry across the Ebro that Saragossa possesses.The ferry-boat was moored to the landing-stage. It is a high-prowed,high-sterned vessel, built on Viking lines, from a picture the observantmust conclude, by a landsman carpenter. It swings across the river on awire rope, with a running tackle, by the force of the stream and the aidof a large rudder.

  The man looked cautiously into the vine-clad shed. It was empty. He crepttowards the boat and found no one there. Then he examined the chain thatmoored it. There was no padlock. In Spain to this day they bar the windowheavily and leave the door open. To the cunning mind is given in thiscustom the whole history of a great nation.

  He stood upright and looked across the river. He was a tall man with aclean cut face and a hard mouth. He gave a sharp sigh as he looked atSaragossa outlined against the sky. His attitude and his sigh seemed todenote along journey accomplished at last, an object attained perhaps orwithin reach, which is almost the same thing, but not quite. For most menare happier in striving than in possession. And no one has yet decidedwhether it is better to be among the lean or the fat.

  Don Francisco de Mogente sat down on the bench provided for those thatawait the ferry, and, tilting back his hat, looked up at the sky. Thenorthwest wind was blowing--the Solano--as it only blows in Aragon. Thebridge below the ferry has, by the way, a high wall on the upper side ofit to break this wind, without which no cart could cross the river atcertain times of the year. It came roaring down the Ebro, bending thetall poplars on the lower bank, driving before it a cloud of dust on theSaragossa side. It lashed the waters of the river to a gleaming whitebeneath the moon. And all the while the clouds stood hard and sharp ofoutline in the sky. They hardly seemed to move towards the moon. Theyscarcely changed their shape from hour to hour. This was not a wind ofheaven, but a current rushing down from the Pyrenees to replace the hotair rising from the plains of Aragon.

  Nevertheless, the clouds were moving towards the moon, and must soon hideit. Don Francisco de Mogente observed this, and sat patiently beneath thetrailing vines, noting their slow approach. He was a white-haired man,and his face was burnt a deep brown. It was an odd face, and theexpression of the eyes was not the usual expression of an old man's eyes.They had the agricultural calm, which is rarely seen in drawing-rooms.For those who deal with nature rarely feel calm in a drawing-room. Theywant to get out of it, and their eyes assume a hunted look. This seemedto be a man who had known both drawing-room and nature; who must haveturned quietly and deliberately to nature as the better part. Thewrinkles on his face were not those of the social smile, which sodisfigure the faces of women when the smile is no longer wanted. Theywere the wrinkles of sunshine.

  "I will wait," he said placidly to himself in English, with, however, astrong American accent. "I have waited fifteen years--and she doesn'tknow I am coming."

  He sat looking across the river with quiet eyes. The city lay before him,with the spire of its unmatched cathedral, the domes of its secondcathedral, and its many towers outlined against the sky just as he hadseen them fifteen years before--just as others had seen them a hundredyears earlier.

  The great rounded cloud was nearer to the moon now. Now it touched it.And quite suddenly the domes disappeared. Don Francisco de Mogente roseand went towards the boat. He did not trouble to walk gently or to loosenthe chains noiselessly. The wind was roaring so loudly that a listenertwenty yards away could have heard nothing. He cast off and then hastenedto the stern of the boat. The way in which he handled the helm showedthat he knew the tricks of the old ferryman by wind and calm, by high andlow river. He had probably learnt them with the photographic accuracyonly to be attained when the mind is young.

  The boat swung out into the river with an odd jerking movement, which thesteersman soon corrected. And a man who had been watching on the bridgehalf a mile farther down the river hurried into the town. A secondwatcher at an open window in the tall house next to the Posada de losReyes on the Paseo del Ebro closed his field-glasses with a thoughtfulsmile.

  It seemed that Don Francisco de Mogente had purposely avoided crossingthe bridge, where to this day the night watchman, with lantern and spear,peeps cautiously to and fro--a startlingly mediaeval figure. It seemedalso that the traveler was expected, though he had performed the laststage of his journey on foot after nightfall.

  It is characteristic of this country that Saragossa should be guardedduring the day by the toll-takers at every gate, by sentries, and by thenew police, while at night the streets are given over to the care of ahandful of night watchmen, who call monotonously to each other allthrough the hours, and may be avoided by the simplest-minded ofmalefactors.

  Don Francisco de Mogente brought the ferry-boat gently alongside thelanding-stage beneath the high wall of the Quay, and made his way throughthe underground passage and up the dirty steps that lead into one of thenarrow streets of the old town.

  The moon had broken through the clouds again and shone down upon thebarred windows. The traveler stood still and looked about him. Nothinghad changed since he had last stood there. Nothing had changed just herefor five hundred years or so; for he could not see the domes of theCathedral of the Pillar, comparatively modern, only a century old.

  Don Francisco de Mogente had come from the West; had known the newness ofthe new generation. And he stood for a moment as if in a dream, breathingin the tainted air of narrow, undrained streets; listening to the cry ofthe watchman slowly dying as the man walked away from him on sandaled,noiseless feet; gazing up at the barred windows, heavily shadowed. Therewas an old world stillness in the air, and suddenly the bells of fiftychurches tolled the hour. It was one o'clock in the morning. The travelerhad traveled backwards, it would seem, into the middle ages. As he heardthe church bells he gave an angry upward jerk of the head, as
if thesound confirmed a thought that was already in his mind. The bells seemedto be all around him; the towers of the churches seemed to dominate thesleeping city on every side. There was a distinct smell of incense in theair of these narrow streets, where the winds of the outer world rarelyfound access.

  The traveler knew his way, and hurried down a narrow turning to the left,with the Cathedral of the Pillar between him and the river. He had made ade tour in order to avoid the bridge and the Paseo del Ebro, a broadroad on the river bank. In these narrow streets he met no one. On thePaseo there are several old inns, notably the Posada de los Reyes, usedby muleteers and other gentlemen of the road, who arise and start at anyhour of the twenty-four and in summer travel as much by night as by day.At the corner, where the bridge abuts on the Paseo, there is always awatchman at night, while by day there is a guard. It is the busiest anddustiest corner in the city.

  Francisco de Mogente crossed a wide street, and again sought a darkalley. He passed by the corner of the Cathedral of the Pillar, and wenttowards the other and infinitely grander Cathedral of the Seo. Beyondthis, by the riverside, is the palace of the archbishop. Farther on isanother palace, standing likewise on the Paseo del Ebro, backing likewiseon to a labyrinth of narrow streets. It is called the Palacio Sarrion,and belongs to the father and son of that name.

  It seemed that Francisco de Mogente was going to the Palacio Sarrion; forhe passed the great door of the archbishop's dwelling, and was alreadylooking towards the house of the Sarrions, when a slight sound made himturn on his heels with the rapidity of one whose life had been passedamid dangers--and more especially those that come from behind.

  There were three men coming from behind now, running after him onsandaled feet, and before he could do so much as raise his arm the moonbroke out from behind a cloud and showed a gleam of steel. Don Franciscode Mogente was down on the ground in an instant, and the three men fellupon him like dogs on a rat. One knife went right through him, and gratedwith a harsh squeak on the cobble-stones beneath.

  A moment later the traveler was lying there alone, half in the shadow,his dusty feet showing whitely in the moonlight. The three shadows hadvanished as softly as they came.

  Almost instantly from, strangely enough, the direction in which they hadgone the burly form of a preaching friar came out into the light. He waswalking hurriedly, and would seem to be returning from some mission ofmercy, or some pious bedside to one of the many houses of religionlocated within a stone's throw of the Cathedral of the Seo in one of thenarrow streets of this quarter of the city. The holy man almost fell overthe prostrate form of Don Francisco de Mogente.

  "Ah! ah!" he exclaimed in an even and quiet voice. "A calamity."

  "No," answered the wounded man with a cynicism which even the near sightof death seemed powerless to effect. "A crime."

  "You are badly hurt, my son."

  "Yes; you had better not try to lift me, though you are a strong man."

  "I will go for help," said the monk.

  "Lay help," suggested the wounded man curtly. But the friar was alreadyout of earshot.

  In an astonishingly short space of time the friar returned, accompaniedby two men, who had the air of indoor servants and the quiet movements ofstreet-bred, roof-ridden humanity.

  Mindful of his cloth, the friar stood aside, unostentatiously and firmlyrefusing to take the lead even in a mission of mercy. He stood withhumbly-folded hands and a meek face while the two men lifted DonFrancisco de Mogente on to a long narrow blanket, the cloak of Navarreand Aragon, which one of them had brought with him.

  They bore him slowly away, and the friar lingered behind. The moon shonedown brightly into the narrow street and showed a great patch of bloodamid the cobblestones. In Saragossa, as in many Spanish cities, certainold men are employed by the municipal authorities to sweep the dust ofthe streets into little heaps. These heaps remain at the side of thestreets until the dogs and the children and the four winds disperse thedust again. It is a survival of the middle ages, interesting enough inits bearing upon the evolution of the modern municipal authority and thetransmission of intellectual gifts.

  The friar looked round him, and had not far to look. There was a dustheap close by. He plunged his large brown hands into it, and with a fewquick movements covered all traces of the calamity of which he had sonearly been a witness.

  Then, with a quick, meek look either way, he followed the two men, whohad just disappeared round a corner. The street, which, by the way, iscalled the Calle San Gregorio, was, of course, deserted; the tall houseson either side were closely shuttered. Many of the balconies bore abranch of palm across the iron railings, the outward sign of priesthood.For the cathedral clergy live here. And, doubtless, the holy men withinhad been asleep many hours.

  Across the end of the Calle San Gregorio, and commanding that narrowstreet, stood the Palacio Sarrion--an empty house the greater part of theyear--a vast building, of which the windows increased in size as theymounted skywards. There were wrought-iron balconies, of which the windowembrasures were so deep that the shutters folded sideways into the wallinstead of swinging back as in houses of which the walls were of normalthickness.

  The friar was probably accustomed to seeing the Palacio Sarrion rigidlyshut up. He never, in his quick, humble scrutiny of his surroundingsglanced up at it. And, therefore, he never saw a man sitting quietlybehind the curiously wrought railings, smoking a cigarette--a man who hadwitnessed the whole incident from beginning to end. Who had, indeed, seenmore than the friar or the two quiet men-servants. For he had seen astick--probably a sword-stick, such as nearly every Spanish gentlemancarries in his own country--fly from the hand of Don Francisco de Mogenteat the moment when he was attacked, and fall into the gutter on thedarker side of the street, where it lay unheeded. Where, indeed, it stillremained when the friar with his swinging gait had turned the corner ofthe Calle San Gregorio.