“Yes, you–have heard from Rodrigo Galán? He was to have sent you a–to have sent you something for me.”
More and more of mystery! Rodrigo had said that Driscoll would see Murguía to give him the ivory cross, and so it had come to pass. But the battle, the old man’s wound, surely these things were not prearranged only that a trinket might be delivered.
“How was I to see you?” Driscoll asked abruptly.
Murguía started, and there was the old slinking evasion.
“There, there,” said Driscoll hastily. “Don’t move that way, you’ll bleed to death! Here, take it, here it is.”
Murguía clutched the ivory thing in his bony fingers.
405“María, María de la Luz,” he fell to murmuring, gazing upon the cross as though it were her poor crushed face. In the old days she had made him forget avarice or fear, and now, before this token of her, the hardness died out of his eyes and they swam in tears. Driscoll gazed down on him pityingly. The old man was palsied. He trembled. There passed over him the same spasm, so silent, so terrible, as on the night of her death, when he had sat at the court martial, his head buried in his arm.
“Rod said you would want it,” Driscoll spoke gently. Then he moved away. An Imperialist officer was approaching over the field who would bring the help which Murguía refused to accept of the Republicans.
Driscoll looked back once. The Imperialist officer was carrying Murguía into the town. He was a large man, and had red hair. His regimentals were gorgeous. There seemed to be something familiar about him, too. Greatly puzzled, Driscoll unslung his glasses, and through them he recognized Colonel Miguel Lopez. Lopez, the former colonel of Dragoons, now commanded the Imperialist reserve, quartered in the monastery of La Cruz around the person of their sovereign. But Lopez had once condemned Murguía to death. A strange solicitude, thought Driscoll, in such a high and mighty person for a little, insignificant, useless warrior as poor Murgie. A strange, a very strange solicitude, and Driscoll could not get it out of his head.