‘It is nothing,’ shouted Concha, in English. ‘It is nothing. It is I who sent the bugler round.’
And his great sword whistled into a man’s brain. In another moment the square was empty, for the politicians who came to murder a woman had had enough steel. The sound of the bugle, intimating, as they supposed, the arrival of troops, completed the work of demoralisation which the recognition of General Vincente had begun.
The little party—the few defenders of the Casa del Ayuntamiento—were left in some confusion in the Plaza, and Estella saw with a sudden cold fear that Conyngham and Concha were on their knees in the midst of a little group of hesitating men. It was Concha who rose first and held up his hand to the watchers on the balcony, bidding them stay where they were. Then Conyngham rose to his feet slowly, as one bearing a burden. Estella looked down in a sort of dream, and saw her lover carrying her father towards the house, her mind only half comprehending, in that semi-dreamlike reception of sudden calamity which is one of Heaven’s deepest mercies.
It was Concepçion who came into the room first, his white shirt dyed with blood in great patches like the colour on a piebald horse. A cut in his cheek was slowly dripping. He went straight to a sofa covered in gorgeous yellow satin, and set the cushions in order.
‘Señorita,’ he said, and spread out his hands. The tears were in his eyes, ‘Half of Spain,’ he added, ‘would rather that it had been the Queen—and the world is poorer.’
A moment later Concha came into the room dragging on his cassock.
‘My child, we are in God’s hand,’ he said, with a break in his gruff voice.
And then came the heavy step of one carrying sorrow.
Conyngham laid his burden on the sofa. General Vincente was holding his handkerchief to his side, and his eyes, which had a thoughtful look, saw only Estella’s face.
‘I have sent for a doctor,’ said Conyngham. ‘Your father is wounded.’