Sarita, the Carlist

by Arthur W. Marchmont

"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.