‘God bless you, my son!’ said the priest, in Latin, with his careless, hurried gesture of the Cross.
After they had walked a few paces he spoke again.
‘I shall go to Barcelona with her,’ he said, ‘and marry her to this man. When one has no affairs of one’s own there always remain—for old women and priests—the affairs of one’s neighbour. Tell me—’ he paused and looked fiercely at him under shaggy brows—‘tell me why you came to Spain.’
‘You want to know who and what I am—before we reach the Calle Mayor?’ said Conyngham.
‘I know what you are, amigo mio, better than yourself, perhaps.’
As they walked through the narrow streets Conyngham told his simple history, dwelling more particularly on the circumstances preceding his departure from England, and Concha listened with no further sign of interest than a grimace or a dry smile here and there.
‘The mill gains by going, and not by standing still,’ he said, and added, after a pause, ‘But it is always a mistake to grind another’s wheat for nothing.’
They were now approaching the old house in the Calle Mayor, and Conyngham lapsed into a silence which his companion respected. They passed under the great doorway into the patio, which was quiet and shady at this afternoon hour. The servants, of whom there are a multitude in all great Spanish houses, had apparently retired to the seclusion of their own quarters. One person alone was discernible amid the orange trees and in the neighbourhood of the murmuring fountain. She was asleep in a rocking-chair, with a newspaper on her lap. She preferred the patio to the garden, which was too quiet for one of her temperament. In the patio she found herself better placed to exchange a word with those engaged in the business of the house, to learn, in fact, from the servants the latest gossip, to ask futile questions of them, and to sit in that idleness which will not allow others to be employed. In a word, this was the Señora Barenna, and Concha, seeing her, stood for a moment in hesitation. Then, with a signal to Conyngham, he crept noiselessly across the tessellated pavement to the shadow of the staircase. They passed up the broad steps without sound and without awaking the sleeping lady. In the gallery above, the priest paused and looked down into the courtyard, his grim face twisted in a queer smile. Then, at the woman sitting there—at life and all its illusions, perhaps—he shrugged his shoulders and passed on.
In the drawing-room they found Julia, who leapt to her feet and hurried across the floor when she saw Conyngham. She stood looking at him breathlessly, her whole history written in her eyes.
‘Yes,’ she whispered, as if he had called her. ‘Yes—what is it? Have you come to tell me—something?’