Part 17

As always, we brought the fascinations of the Cherub to bear upon the crowd, as one trains the latest gun upon the enemy; and his crooning brought out facts which made Dick think it high time he got things into shape, and his motor service to running. It seemed that once upon a time a good road had been made from Bailen to Linares, but the road was crossed by a river; and when the masonry supports for a bridge had been built, it turned out that girders had been forgotten. Somehow, it was nobody’s place to jog anybody else’s memory, and there the matter had ended, so long ago that grass and flowers had sprouted among the futile stones.

It appeared the most natural thing in the world to the people of Bailen, who were accustomed to ford the river, when they wanted to cross, with horses; but though the weather had been dry for the last few days, the recent torrents which had fallen in the mountains, still swelled the volume of water to such a height that it might “put out the fire in the automobile.”

I was glad to hear this, because if it would put out our fire, it would put out Carmona’s; and as he was prudent in matters concerning his car, he would probably have stopped at Andujar; thus fate would again bring me near to Monica, despite our promise.

The main reason for going to Linares was because the Cherub believed there was a fair hotel, built to accommodate Englishmen collected for the lead-mining; therefore it was without regret that we turned the Gloria to follow the _carretera_ to Cordoba.

Our advisers ran after us with a warning to avoid the rough cobbles of Bailen by taking the _ronda_ which skirts the town on its left. So slowly, in dusk that blossomed blue as the myrtle flower, we passed round outside the town, regained the high road, leaping at speed into a world of wide, silvery spaces and mystery of violet hollows, diving into the deep valley of the swollen river, and rejoicing in a hard surface of good macadam for fifteen miles or more.

Thus we arrived at Andujar, the lights of our great acetylene lamps (lit before the sky turned from opal to amethyst) prying into dark doorways and windows as Röntgen rays pry through flesh to bone.

In the white glare, pretty girls in doorways looked like actresses in a costume play, waiting in the wings to “go on.” But no yells of a stage mob ever were so realistic as those of the unrehearsed band who howled over my poor Gloria as she deposited her passengers at the _fonda_; and Ropes and I pushed her through a wall of human beings to a stable-garage, where her flywheel gushed a protest of fiery sparks on the high stone step of entrance.

The _fonda_ was passable; but Carmona and his party were not there; neither were they anywhere else in Andujar, as we made it our business to discover; and we guessed that the grey car must after all have ventured to Linares.

As it had vanished, we were free to start when we chose next morning. So we chose an early hour, flying over good roads through a land embroidered with the scarlet of poppies, the blue of gentian, the pink of clover, and gold of buttercups, stitched in with the silver of little running streams.

“ ‘Give us bread and give us bulls,’ is the cry of this country,” said the Cherub, greeting with joyous glances each feature of his loved Andalucia.

“It sounds like a beef sandwich,” Dick reflected aloud; but Pilar reproached him for flippancy. “You mustn’t make jokes about bread in Andalucia!” she exclaimed. “And it’s called a sin ever to throw away a crumb. Because it’s the gift of Heaven, if you drop a bit you must pick it up and apologize by kissing it.”

“Why not eat it instead?” asked Dick.

“You can do that afterwards. And if bread’s made with holes in it, you must stand the holey side up, because the spirit of God enters through the holes to bless you.”

“I thought only olives were sacred in Andalucia,” said Dick, staring away over enormous tracts of the silver-grey trees growing out of copper soil, waving as far as the eye could follow, to the floating line of ethereal blue mountains.

“They’re sacred, too,” assented Pilar. “Did you know, in the old days they used to be sold only for gold, gold carried on mule back in great bags, and exchanged on the spot, for the trees—so many for so much? We have olives at our place, and they’re gathered in such a nice old-fashioned way; papa doesn’t care for new ways, even if they make a little more money. It’s pretty to watch. I should like you to see it, only—Señor Waring doesn’t like old-fashioned things.”

“I like making the ‘little more money,’ I’m afraid,” Dick confessed.

“Sometimes I like money too—when I want to buy anything. At other times I don’t care. Lately I’ve been saving up. I’ve got one thousand nine hundred pesetas.”

“Good gracious!” laughed Dick, “are you going to buy a bull-farm with such a gigantic sum?”

“Funny you should have said that. I’m going to buy one bull. He’s the only possession of the Duke of Carmona’s that I want, and I want him so much that I’ve sacrificed oh,—I can’t remember how many Paris hats, and shoes, and silk petticoats, and pretty dresses to get him, with _all_ my own money! The worst of it is, he’ll _never_ know about the hats and things.”

Dick was looking interested now.

“What in the name of goodness will you do with him when you get him?” he inquired.

“Save him,” said the girl.

“From what?”

“From the bull-ring. Oh, he’s a _toro bravo_, is Vivillo, a heart of gold. Not the most famous _torero_ in Spain shall pierce it. I’ve loved him for four years, since he was a baby at his mother’s side, and Rafael Calmenare used to take me to visit him; loved him better even than Corcito, and all this time I’ve been saving up to buy him before he’s of the age for a _corrida_. Now I’ve enough, or nearly, and there aren’t many weeks to waste, for soon he’ll be five; and already he has the strength and courage of three bulls, my Vivillo! I long to see him again—long for the day when I can put my arms round his great neck, and say, ‘Hermanito, you’re mine!’ ”

“Your arms round his neck!” gasped Dick. “A fighting bull! You’re joking. Say you mean an Irish bull, and put me out of misery.”

“He’s a true Spanish grandee of a bull, and my arms have been round his neck often,” said Pilarcita.

“Then he can’t be very fierce.”

“He can be terrible. He has nearly killed two men—strangers who teased him, so he meant no harm, poor darling! and they daren’t let any except black horses come near him. No Muira bull is more savage than he if he’s roused. You know, the Duke of Carmona’s bulls are as celebrated as the Muiras themselves. But Vivillo has always loved me, and one or two others—me best, though—and he’ll eat out of my hand, the great brown velvet beast, like a kitten.”

“How long since he’s seen you?” asked Dick.

“Six weeks.”

“I wouldn’t trust his memory.”

“I trust it as I would my brother’s. You shall see me petting him.”

“Great Scott! you won’t let her risk her life with this wild beast, will you, Colonel O’Donnel?” Dick cried out.

But the Cherub smiled his placid smile.

“Don Cipriano calls her Una, because she can tame wild beasts,” said he.

Dick’s face became almost too expressive. If he did not want Pilar’s eyes to read his every emotion, I thought he would be wiser to put on his motor-mask.

XXV

WHAT CORDOBA LACKED

Through a flowery field of cloth-of-gold we came, while the afternoon was young, into Cordoba—“Kartuba the Important,” lying like a grave entombing its dead glory, prone at the foot of tombstone mountains.

After the dazzle of wild-flowers shining in the sun, and the ozone of country breezes, a sudden entrance into the network of narrow streets was like being thrown, without a clue, into the Minotaur’s dark labyrinth.

I had thought that no town could have narrower streets than Toledo; but the streets of Cordoba were mere slits between house-walls. As we scraped through on the car, Dick likened the town to a huge white cake divided into slices by a sharp knife, but left in shape with only one or two pieces pulled out to loosen the mass.

Still, the stone-paved slits contrived to make pictures; with here and there a pair of splendid Moorish doors, a row of ancient eastern-patterned windows, or a fairy glimpse of a sunlit _patio_ beyond a tunnel of shadow; a fountain spraying jewels, a waving of palms and glow of hanging roses.

“She’s sure to be here,” I said to myself, as we stopped at last before the principal hotel. “Since the journey’s supposed to be a pleasure trip, Carmona’s bound to give his guests time to see the sights of Cordoba.”

But nothing was known of the Duke and his party at the hotel, although there was a rumour that an automobile had passed through the town in the morning.

The Cherub, consulted, was of opinion that if Carmona’s car had come, it must have remained.

“There’d be nowhere for them to stop afterwards short of Seville,” he said, “unless Carmona, and that’s near Seville. They must be lurking in Cordoba—perhaps at the Marqués de Villa-blanca’s, who’s a friend of the Duke’s. We shall come across our lovely little lady presently, if we get about in the town; in the Paseo del Gran Capitán, or the Patio de los Naranjos, or the cathedral, or by the ruins of the Alcázar.”

“Besides, I thought you’d made up your mind not to worry till we got to Seville,” said Dick.

“So I had,” I answered. “But I have a feeling as if something had gone wrong.”

“Any reason for the feeling—except the feeling itself?” asked Dick.

I shook my head, not caring to mention the letter that might have gone astray. “Nothing I can define.”

“Then I guess it’s all right, and you’re developing nerves.”

“I know _just_ how he feels,” said Pilar, with a reproachful look at Dick, with whom she was at odds since the episode of the bull. “There was an expression in Lady Monica’s eyes, wasn’t there, at Manzanares, as if she were sad? Oh, I saw it; and they wouldn’t let me get within whispering distance of her afterwards, or I should have found out what it meant. I had the idea that they were _particularly_ anxious to keep me away, and I wondered if there were any new reason. I’m not surprised that Don Ramón is worried. One can see that Señor Waring’s never been in love!”

“Oh, haven’t I?” exclaimed Dick; which, of course made matters worse; and to mend them, he went on blundering. "What do _you_ know about the symptoms?"

“Girls are born knowing things it takes men years to learn,” said Pilar.

It did not allay my anxiety that she should have noticed what I had noticed. But I clung to the Cherub’s assurance, hoping, when we had set out on our explorations, to meet her, to see her face light up with the radiance I knew.

But there were no strangers save ourselves, and a few wandering Americans under the palms and orange trees of the _paseo_ dedicated to the memory of El Gran Capitán.

We wandered—Pilar keeping at my side, and leaving Dick to her father—from gate to gate outside the Mosque-Cathedral which once made Cordoba the Mecca of Europe; gazing up at the tremendous mass of honey-coloured masonry rising like a vast fortress from its buttresses of stone; lingering under the bell-tower of the Puerta del Perdon because Pilar “felt as if something would happen there.” But nothing did happen; and we went to face the blighting of renewed hopes in the Court of Oranges, whose melancholy charm and sensuous perfume was sad as the song of a nightingale when summer is dying.

She was not there; nor could we find her in the marble forest of the pillared cathedral, though, while Dick and Pilar made up their differences over the jewelled mosaics, I searched for her.

“I tell you, Ramón, there’s some satisfaction in feeling that you’re looking at the best things the world’s got to show,” said Dick, almost in my ear, “and there are lots of them in your country, especially in Cordoba, though I suppose the Moors would weep to see it now. But you don’t seem to be enjoying them, in spite of risking such a lot to come where they are.”

I didn’t remind him that the risk I ran was for the one best thing in all the world, which was only temporarily in my country, and that my depression came because it was not at the moment visible. But Pilar did not need reminding, and in the way of sweet women, tried to “keep my mind occupied” by talking history and legend, confusing them deliciously, and defending her stories of beautiful Egilona and fair Florinda by saying that, anyhow, nobody cared whether they were true or not. Besides, what _was_ history, since dull people were continually discovering that none of the best bits had ever happened?

“I choose to believe in Florinda,” she cried, “and all the other beautiful women who influenced kings, and made wars, and upset countries. Without them and their love-stories, history would be like faded tapestry without gold threads.”

So Dick ceased to argue, and in silence we left the gem-like perfection of the third Mihrab, to wander once more through the wilderness of gleaming columns that were now like over-arching trees, now like falling fountains.

No dusky vista out of those many changing ones framed the figure I longed to see; and when we had left the cathedral and climbed to the gardens and towers where stood once the Alcázar of Gothic and Moorish glories, it was the same story of disappointment. Only the Americans we had seen in the _paseo_ were there, more interested than I in such fragments as they could catch of Pilar’s tales. Dungeons where Theodofredo had been blinded, and Witica the wicked had paid for his crimes; vanished halls where Rodrigo reigned and loved before the dark day beside the Guadalete lost the crown for him and Christendom; what did they hold of interest since the garden of lilacs and roses which covered their ruins was empty of one Presence?

When we had seen everything, I left my friends in the hall of the hotel choosing curios from glass cases, and went out again in search of news concerning the automobile which had passed in the morning.

Presumably it had attracted a crowd, yet no one seemed to know anything of it until at last, just as I was giving up hope, I met an old man who had seen a large grey motor-car at the railway station. A few minutes later, I had solved the mystery of the Lecomte’s disappearance. It had arrived early; its passengers had been conducted round Cordoba in the smallest possible time by Carmona; it had then been driven to the station; and with its late occupants had gone to Seville by the same train.

There might have been several motives for this move. The car might have been partially disabled, not having been properly prepared at Manzanares; or Carmona might have determined to thwart the destiny which so far had kept me near him. I was inclined to accept the latter theory, and it did not tend to promote my peace of mind.

I was glad to hear, however, that the train was not due at Seville until late that evening. If we made an early start next day, it was not likely that the situation could be much changed before I arrived, free of obligations to the Duchess.

Of course, said Pilar, before I had time to ask, they would be ready to start early, oh, very early. It would be beautiful to be in the country before the sun had drunk up the dew on the grass, and withered the roses of dawn in the clouds. There was no fear of cold now that we were in dear Andalucía. Yes! we would have coffee at six, and leave at half-past.

I should not have dared suggest such a trial of moral courage, but I accepted the sacrifice; so the roses of morning which Pilar loved still bloomed in the garden of the sky, and trailed their reflection in the Guadalquivir, as we rolled over the old bridge and past the white, Moorish hills.

A morning in Paradise could scarcely be more beautiful; and the pinky-purple blossoms of the _alamo_ shimmering in a rosy mist against dark cypress trees, or mingling with the white lace of hawthorn was a colour-symphony of Spring.

Dignified country houses no longer raised brown-tiled roofs from among groves of olives; but an illimitable sea of waving downs lay bathed in the amber light of Spain. Then, olive woods again, with a foam, of field-flowers spraying their gnarled feet, hedges of sweetbrier, tangled with tall, wild lilacs, and blossoming thorn. Beyond, high hills up which the Gloria stormed boldly, frightening the horses of a troop of laughing soldiers who rode without saddles; over stony roads, mere rough tracks drawn through meadows, where bulls grazed, and bellowed at the automobile; thus to a village which first showed itself like a white crown on a hilltop, and proved to be inhabited by women and children of surpassing beauty. Never were such eyes as those which looked from the faces in the quick-gathering crowd; eyes like black wells with fallen stars in their depths.

Peasant houses by the wayside had thatched roofs, grey and glistening as silver plush; and outside ovens like huge cups turned upside down. The fields were gay with flowers; the distance floated in waves of azure gauze which touched the sky.

On we swept, as though to find the joining place, but found only Ecija, the Town of the Seven Brigands, with its grand bridge and pearl-white Moorish mills, in the yellow, swift-running Genil.

Kings had been lodged behind those brass-nailed doors and wrought-iron balconies, the Cherub said; and malefactors famed in history and ballad had swung from that tall gallows which caught the eye before Ecija’s eight church towers. There had been famous fighting, too, by the river bank; but now the place slept, dreaming of peace, and the whirr of the mill-wheels sounded as comforting as the “chum-chum” of a motor that runs by night.

So we flashed out of the Province of Cordoba into the Province of Seville, and tall, slender palms, rearing feathered heads among walnut trees and oaks, were signposts pointing south. It was early in April, but the air was the air of an English June, and I wondered to see men muffled in long _capas_. “They do it to keep out the sun, as in the north to keep out the wind,” explained Pilar; but she only laughed when Dick asked why they shaved their donkeys’ backs, why they put red and yellow muzzles on their donkeys’ mouths, why they always carried plaid “railway rugs” on their beasts’ backs or their own, and why their trousers and leggings were made in one piece?

Beyond the olives, black clumps of umbrella pines flung ink-blots against the sky, and a purple carpet of budding heather was torn apart to let the road pass through. It was ideal motor-country, and Dick recalled with sneers the sixty horse-power man in Biarritz, who had feared the experiment.

“The way is to _do_ what you want to do, and find out as you go along whether it can be done or not,” he soliloquized.

I wondered if he were thinking of another difficult road, not to be travelled by motors—a road where perhaps Don Cipriano already knew the way.

Larks sprang skyward from beds of wild flowers as we fled by, little fountains of music; tall cranes flew out of screening bushes beside bright streams; and blurring the distance before us, a mist of rain floated like a veil blown across the face of Spring.

In sight of Carmona’s splendid walls and ruined castle, the rain caught us; and for Pilar’s sake we made the car cosey by fastening down the front glass and filling in the space with drawn canvas curtains.

After this, our fleeting glimpses of pine and palm and olive were dimmed as we bowled along a sandy road, yellow as beaten gold. Now and again a patch of purple blossom burning through the mist sang a loud, exultant note of spring and love; and pretty orange-pickers, in men’s jackets and brown trousers, warbled of the same theme in that soft Andaluza which is beyond all other languages of passion.

The colour, and the music, and the day went to my head. I knew that I was young, and I wanted my chance of happiness—wanted it so much that I felt I could kill a man who dared try to snatch it from me.

XXVI

IN THE PALACE OF THE KINGS

“Now I’ve something serious to say, Don Ramón,” began the Cherub, when we had passed the first pink-and-white house which marked the suburbs of Seville. “You mustn’t go to an hotel here. It would be dangerous. You must be our guest; and Señor Waring, too. I feel now as if our little play were true, and you were my son; while as for Señor Waring, we might have known him for years, might we not, Pilarcita?”

“Of course. For my part, I’m ready to adopt him for a brother, too,” replied Pilar.

I covered Dick’s recoil at this blow by thanking the Cherub. He was more than kind, I said, but we couldn’t think of—

“You will not think of disappointing us,” broke in the dear brown fellow. “Could you have imagined that our only reason is to keep you out of danger? No. We’re not so unselfish. We want you. Partings will come soon enough. We must have you with us, under our roof, at our table, as long as we can. Now you understand, you will say ‘yes.’ ”

“In my country,” said Dick, as a broad hint to me, “when we tell people we want them to visit us, we mean it; and I guess Colonel O’Donnel and Miss O’Donnel are the same sort.”

Of course I wanted to say yes; and, of course, after this, I did say yes without further parleying.

“Now begins the most critical time in this adventure of yours. Don Ramón,” the Cherub went on. “You see, as our place is only five miles outside Seville, we know many people; and though Carmona is seldom there with his mother, he certainly has acquaintances, and some of them may be ours too. You have travelled since Burgos as my son, though you wore his uniform only for two days; but you may be sure Carmona has been looking forward to shaking you off, once and for all, if you should venture to Seville to see the show of _Semana Santa_ as other tourists see it.”

“He perhaps thinks that, because of our promise—which we’ve kept—he’s shaken Ramón off already,” said Dick.