CHAPTER XIX
TERESA
As day succeeded monotonous day, even Galva's buoyant spirits began to show signs of the strain of hope deferred. The first hours of her captivity had given her little or no uneasiness, feeling sure that her friends would discover her whereabouts; if they did not, she told herself that, armed as she was, she was more than a match for the two craven souls of her jailers.
But on the second night she had heard the sound of a new voice in the room down-stairs, whether one voice or more she could not say. Also the sound of a motor-horn had come to her through the woods. This latter she had not given much thought to at the time, thinking that in all probability it was a car on its way to Alcador. Now that there were visitors in the room below, the memory came back to her and took on a new significance.
Whoever it was who was responsible for this muttering that reached her distantly through the floor, he did not seem anxious for an interview with her. She had pounded on the boards with the heel of her shoe, but beyond a short silence and a little laugh it had had no effect, and the murmuring voices went on again as before. Then she had turned her attention to the heavy fire-irons, and the continued din had brought old Pieto to the landing to remonstrate through the door, and to assure the girl, in answer to her questions, that there was no one in the house save themselves.
But a little later, Galva had heard the opening of the front door and, in the distance, the sound of a motor-engine being started.
The next morning, she had seen a man digging in the little vegetable patch, a coarse, black-browed, evil-faced fellow. Galva remembered having seen the same type of man, with their closely-cropped heads, among the loafers outside the bull-rings in Madrid, and she knew their reputation. She drew back into the room, and for the first time since her capture, her heart failed her. Where were her friends, and why did they not come to her?
Her mind flew, in its need, to the Duc de Choleaux Lasuer, and she told herself, and thrilled at the telling, that he would rush to her assistance did he know. He had asked her on that last day in Paris to write to him, should she be in any trouble, and she, seeing no clouds in her future, had laughed at him. Now she shut her eyes and saw again the eager boyish face, and she knew what a big place he had in her heart.
She threw herself down on the great bed and buried her face in the pillow. The tears that came were the first she had shed and they relieved her. The knowledge that all escape by force was impossible took from her the thoughts that had buoyed her up. Now, she could not tell how many there were against her, and she knew that the man she had seen in the garden was not one to be cowed by a girl with a toy pistol.
She sat up and dried her eyes. What could not be done one way, must be done another. She must think out some scheme, some subterfuge to gain her release. If only she could get a letter or a message sent to Venta Villa. The high road ran only a hundred yards from her window, but the hundred yards might be miles for all the use they were, so securely was her retreat hidden. Of the imaginary accident and of her supposed death she of course knew nothing.
After this the days passed with a dull monotony. The prisoner, seeing that no good was to be expected of it, dropped her bantering tone with the old people. No longer were her meals served to her at the pistol point. For hours together she would sit, a pathetic little figure, in the great arm-chair which she had pulled into the embrasure of one of the windows, not even turning her head when Pieto or his wife entered. She would sit there gazing out across the tree-tops to the arid plains and the wild desolation of the distant hills. There were dark circles showing now under the beautiful eyes, and sometimes the meals were taken away again untasted.
And then a little gleam of hope came to her. Since her first arrival at the little castle she had noticed the covert looks, half admiration, half fear, with which Teresa had regarded her. Twice, too, she had seen that the old woman had been on the point of saying something that was in her mind, but each time she had checked herself and broken off with a sigh. One day Galva spoke to her.
It was a dull and miserable morning, with a fine rain that lashed and blurred the windowpanes, and a high wind moaned through the trees of the forest, swaying their topmost branches. Teresa was leaving the room with the scarcely touched breakfast when Galva laid a gentle hand on her arm.
"Teresa," she whispered.
The dame stopped and looked at her. Galva thought she saw compassion in the beady black eyes.
"Teresa—you are a woman and have a heart. I have seen your heart sometimes in your eyes, when you look at me. Have you no pity there for me? All this is killing me—I am ill, Teresa—I have lived my life in the open air of God's green world, and this," with a despairing gesture that took in all the room, "is weighing on me—killing—crushing me."
Teresa swallowed something in her throat.
"I had a heart, but I thought it dead—and you say you can see it in my eyes. How can I help you? I act for others."
"I am rich, Teresa, you can have anything you wish for. Let me write a letter to my friends. Think of their anxiety. Here," and the girl tore at the bosom of her blouse, snapping a thin ribbon that passed round her neck, "take this now—it's valuable, Teresa, very valuable. See, they are diamonds, and that big red stone is a ru——"
Galva broke off and gazed in wonderment at the old woman. At sight of the glittering object which the girl with trembling hands held out, a sudden change had come into the wrinkled face. She seized on the large marquise ring and looked at it intently, searchingly, but there was no cupidity in her glance, only a great dawning wonderment. She turned roughly on the bewildered girl, bringing her old eyes within a foot of her face.
"Who are you?" she asked, her voice a hoarse whisper. "For God's sake—tell me—who are you?"
"I am Miss Galva Baxendale, that is, I—I—— Oh, I see that you know. I can tell by your face that you do."
"I do now. I know that you are the Princess Miranda. I suspected before, and my suspicion has grown every time I saw your eyes. But I told myself that I was getting old and that I saw things that did not exist—only in my brain."
Teresa was on her knees, pressing Galva's hand to her cold lips.
"It was this ring—the sainted Queen who wore it. Oh, how can I tell you——"
The old woman was crying softly now, and she had not cried for nearly twenty years. In a little while she grew more composed and went to the landing and listened.
"They are at their cards," she said, when she returned, "and Pieto is drunk; they will not disturb us," and then Teresa told her story.
"You said to-night that you saw the heart that died—for my heart died seventeen years ago when I buried my José. He was only five, but he never walked. He would just lie in the sun in his little wheeled cradle and look up at the sky and smile at me with his deep eyes and ask me things I could not tell him. Pieto, too, in those days was a good father and loved his little crippled son almost as much as I did. And then one day there was a jingling of harness and Queen Elene drove past our little house, that lay up on the cliff road towards Logillo. She ordered her postilions to stop and called me to the side of the carriage. She had the sweetest smile that ever told of a perfect soul, and tender eyes into which came a mist when I answered her questions about little José.
"And then she got down and knelt in the dust beside the cradle, and the little man looked at her with his great wondering eyes, and put up his thin little hand to touch the glittering ornaments at the Queen's neck. And after that she often drove that way, and would sit with him. Once she told me of her own little child, a maid—but I think she thought it unkind to speak of her own blessings in the face of my sorrow, for she only spoke of you that once."
Teresa held out her hand and took up the ring that she had laid down on the tray.
"This was what he admired more than anything, and your mother would take it from her finger and let him play with it, flashing it back and forth in the sunlight. The day before he died she had lent it to him and he had gone to sleep still holding it. The Queen would not awake him, and in the night he died. When, afterwards, I returned it to the Queen, she wept; she would have had me keep it, but it was, she said, the first gift your father had given her. That is my story—and you, Princess? I do not want to know how you escaped the fate of that devilish work at the Palace. I know only, that you are here and that I ask nothing better than to die for you, for the sake of your sainted mother, and for the joy she brought into my boy's life."
Galva, her eyes moist with tears, bent and kissed the wrinkled brow.
"And I, Teresa, want you to live. I think I want you always to be with me, to talk to me about my mother."
Teresa shook her head. "I am not worthy," she said. "After José was taken from us, Pieto took to the drink, and I—I did not care what happened. We took service with Gabriel Dasso—it was rumoured that his was the hand that killed the Queen. We hoped to gain evidence that it was so, and we would have poisoned him. But we learnt nothing. We obeyed him and did his dirty work, sinking lower and lower until we forgot why we had entered his service. I am not worthy, Princess, to touch the sole of your shoe."
Galva rose.
"I won't write the letter till this afternoon, Teresa. You can get it through to Corbo for me?"
"There is a carrier, Princess, who passes here twice a week, about nightfall. He reaches Corbo at eleven. To-morrow is his next journey. I will see that he takes your letter."
"And you will come and sit with me, Teresa—we have much to talk over, haven't we? It will do you good, dear. Do not let them see down-stairs that you have been crying. For the present you must keep our secret."
When Teresa had left the room, Galva crossed over, and leaning her elbows on the mantelpiece looked long and searchingly at herself in the mirror.