Part 19

“Here we are at home!” exclaimed the Cherub with a contented sigh, as he gently touched Ropes’ shoulder. “Welcome, dear friends, to the Cortijo de Santa Rufina. It, and all within its walls, is at your disposition.”

We drove in through a wide gate in the outer wall, where there was a clamour of greeting from the steward, many servants, and more dogs, dogs of all races, who selected Pilar for their wildest demonstrations. In a second she was out of the car, and half drowned in a wave of tumultuous doghood. Laughing, shaking hands with the servants, patting or suppressing greyhounds, collies, setters, retrievers, she had never seemed so charming. This was the _real_ Pilar—Pilar at home; the Pilar it would be next to impossible to uproot from such associations. Again, poor Dick! And now he no longer tried to hide the loving admiration in his eyes. I think he would even have done his best to fondle a wild bull or two of her acquaintance had they been among the friends who gave her welcome.

Away boomed the Gloria to the stables—the sole garage at the Cortijo—while we were bidden through the Moorish entrance-porch and wrought-iron _cancela_ into a _patio_ surrounded on all sides by an arcade, roofed with green and brown tiling. The supporting pillars were of pale pink brick, not marble, and the pavement was of brick also, interset with a pattern of small blue tiles. But the tiles were old and good; from a carved stone basin in the middle of the court sprang the tall crystal stem of a fountain, blossoming into diamonds; pearly arum lilies, pink azaleas, and pale green hydrangeas bloomed in huge white and blue and yellow pots from Triana, of the same beautiful shapes made before Santa Justa and Santa Rufina knew they were saints, and undertook to keep the Giralda from falling.

The windows leading into the rooms surrounding the _patio_ were large as doors, and all were hospitably open, giving through thin curtains glimpses of old furniture carefully grouped to please a woman’s dainty taste. Pilar again—always Pilar! Here were her _lares_ and _penates_; and she was a goddess among lesser household gods. I knew that it would be safer for Dick to say a hasty good-bye upon the threshold; but I knew also that no power on earth could force him to do it.

“This is only a farm, you know,” said the girl, meekly, all the while dimpling with pride in her home and what she had made it; “for we are only farmers, aren’t we, Papa.”

Our rooms—Dick’s and mine—were not overstocked with furniture; but there were two or three things for which an antiquary would have pawned his soul. On one side, our windows looked upon the _patio_; on the other, we gazed through iron bars over olives and meadows where grain was green. There was no sound save the tinkling rain of the fountain, and now and then the sleepy note of a bird, or a far-away lowing of cattle—perhaps the welcoming bellow of Vivillo, the brown bull which was the sole possession of Carmona coveted by Pilar.

The two servants who waited at dinner were wreathed in smiles at seeing again their master and mistress; and their occasional furtive glances of interest in my direction made me wonder if they had not received mysterious instructions as to how they must answer any questions concerning me. But, whatever those instructions might be, I was sure they would be loyally carried out; for the Cherub is a man servants would obey through torture until death, if these days were as the old.

At half-past nine Ropes was ready to spin me back into Seville. We arrived earlier than need be; and having made an appointment to meet at a quiet hotel, where Ropes would await me from half-past eleven till half-past twelve, I decided to walk past Carmona’s house and reconnoitre.

I knew where to find it, in the Calle de las Dueñas; but if I had hoped for a tell-tale glimpse within, as in a London or Parisian mansion, I was disappointed. Once a Moorish palace, it showed a closed, secretive front to the narrow street. But I knew, for I had read, that within there were six courtyards, ninety marble pillars, half a dozen fountains, a garden of orange and magnolia trees, with myrtle hedges clipped to represent the ducal arms; that there were vast treasures of statuary, pictures by Velasquez, Murillo, and Alonso Cano; gold-inlaid plate armour; tapestry from the Netherlands not to be surpassed at the Royal Palace at Madrid.

I knew that these splendours would loom large in the eyes of Lady Vale-Avon, and might count for something even with Monica, who confessed to a love of all things beautiful. I thought of the famous Carmona jewels, which would belong to the wife of the Duke, while she lived, as they had belonged to generations of Duchesses. Above all, I thought of the incomparable Blanca Laguna pearl and its glistening maids of honour, which, by this time perhaps, had been shown to Monica. There were few girls in Spain, or in the world, I remembered hearing my mother say, who could resist that pearl as a bride. And now it was offered to Monica, a penniless girl of eighteen, whose beauty formed her sole dowry.

There, behind the cold reserve of those white walls with the shut, brass-studded doors and barred windows, she was being fêted by the Duke, dining on gold plate, in a tapestried room fragrant with orange flowers. I could see the pictures. I could see the look in Carmona’s eyes as they turned to her, saying, “all this is yours if you will have it.” And Carmona’s eyes were handsome eyes; I had to admit that, in justice.

Would she hold true to me—true to a man with no palaces, no lands, no priceless pearls, and only half as many hundreds a year as her other lover had thousands? Would she be able to resist her mother, now that mother had seen with her own eyes how much there was to fight for and to win?

The question would come. But with it came a vision of Monica herself, pure and sweet as beautiful, loyal and loving as she was lovely. And I said to myself, “Yes, she will be true.”

It was with the clear ringing of these words in my mind that I turned my back upon the house of Carmona.

Once I had passed into the Alcázar with Olivero’s band of dancers and guitarists I was free to do as I pleased. And I pleased to escape from my laughing, chattering companions before the arrival of the Duke and his guests, and the illuminations in their honour. There was no better place to wait and watch for the opportunity I wanted, than in the mock-Moorish kiosk at the end of the lower garden. From there I could see without being seen; and the moment a chance came I should be ready to take it.

It was early still, but Olivero lost no time in marshalling his little army into place, that they might make a good effect as a _tableau vivant_ when the great people came. He seated his six men with guitars, their sombreros at precisely the right angle on their glossy black heads, and in a row of chairs in front six young women in black dresses with black lace mantillas, the red and yellow ribbons of their castanets already in their hands. Then, at intervals, he grouped the dancers, youths, and pretty girls, carefully dressed in the costumes of different provinces, making a bouquet of bright colours in the light of a few concealed lamps which supplemented the silver radiance of the moon, now almost at the zenith.

The minutes passed. The dancers talked in subdued tones which scarcely disturbed the nightingales. A breeze rustled the crisp leaves of the orange trees and myrtle hedges; far away the voice of the watchman told the hour of eleven, echoed by the chiming bells of a church clock; and the last stroke had not sounded when there was a burst of merry voices in a distant avenue. Carmona and his friends had come—late, of course—or there could have been no Andalucíans among them; and suddenly, as if on a signal, the gardens pulsed with rose-coloured light. In the pink blaze I saw Monica, slender and fair as a lily, in a white dress sparkling with silver; but I had only time to see that she walked beside Carmona, when the rose flame died down and left the garden pure and peaceful under the moon.

For an instant the soft light seemed darkness, and I lost the white figure. When it sprang to my eyes again in a sharp emerald flash, while all the hidden fountains in the garden walks spouted jewels, others were grouped round it; only the gold crown of rippling hair shone out clear as a star for me among other women’s dark coils and braids.

Old ebony chairs with crimson velvet cushions and the Carmona arms in heavy gilding, had been sent to the Alcázar from the Duke’s house, for the entertainment. The party sat down, and the dancing began, to the _flamenco_ music of guitars and the clacking of castanets; the _fandango_, the _bolero_, the _malagueña_, the _chaquera vella_; all the classical dances of old Spain, and each one a variant on the theme of love, the woman coy, coquettishly retreating; the man persuading or demanding, the woman yielding in passionate abandonment at last.

In the midst of a _sevillana_ I came out from the shadows of the kiosk and walked without a sound of rattling pebble or cracking twig, along a path which the moon had not yet found.

The high backs of the ebony chairs were turned to me. I could not even see the heads of the people who sat in them; but I had watched them take their places, and I knew that Monica’s chair was the outside one on the end, at the right.

Everyone was absorbed in watching the dance. As it approached its tempestuous climax of joy and love, I moved into the deep shadow of a magnolia tree, close to Monica—so close that, reaching out from behind the round trunk which screened me, I touched her hand.

With a start, she glanced up, expecting perhaps to find that the breeze had blown a rose-branch across her fingers. Instead, she saw my face; for I had taken off the wide-brimmed grey sombrero and bared my head to her.

For a second she looked straight into my eyes, as if she doubted that she saw aright. Then, an unbelievable thing happened. Her eyes grew cold as glass. Her lips tightened into a line which I had not dreamed their soft curves could take. Her youth and beauty froze under my gaze. With a haughty lifting of her brows, and an indescribable movement of her shoulder which could mean nothing but scornful indifference, she turned away as if impatient at having lost a gesture of the dancers.

Astounded, I stepped back; and so vast was the chasm of my amazement that I floundered in it bewildered, unable even to suffer.

Then came a pang of such pain and anger as I had never known—anger not against the girl, but against Carmona; and the knife which pierced me was dipped in the poison of jealously. My impulse was to leap out from the shadow and strangle him. My hands tingled for his neck, and through the drumming of the blood in my ears I could hear the crack his spine would make as I twisted it. For that instant I was a madman. Then, something that was myself conquered.

Horror of the savage thing just born in me overflowed in an icy flood that swept it, drowning, out of my soul. But never again, so long as I may live, shall I condemn a man who kills another in one blind moment of rage.

Even when the red glaze was gone from before my eyes, I could not trust myself to stand there, looking at Carmona as he smiled and patronized the dancers by clapping his hands. I turned away, not stopping until I had regained the kiosk.

There I sat down, elbows on knees, head in my hands, trying to analyse that look on Monica’s face, trying to tell myself that I must have mis-read it—that such an expression as I imagined could not have been there for me.

Perhaps, as I suddenly appeared behind a veil of flickering moonlight and shadow she had not known who I was. She had mistaken me for some impertinent stranger, and rather than give an alarm, she had hoped that a frown might rid her of the intruder. Then, I had gone without giving her a second chance to recognize me.

After a few minutes of such reflections, I almost persuaded myself that I had been a fool and was wholly to blame for what I suffered. At least, I said, I owed it to her to make sure that the look had been for me, and the suspense must end to-night. I would know, even if I made her answer me under the eyes of Carmona and the others.

But a moment later I saw that I need not be driven to such extremes.

The first part of the dance was over; the Duke and his guests were walking through the gardens in the interval. They were coming my way—coming to the kiosk. As they advanced, I retreated into shadow. I let the group linger at the kiosk, admiring the beautiful _azulejos_; I let them move on; then, as Monica loitered purposely behind the others, drooping and evidently sad, I put myself in front of her.

“Monica,” I said, “what has happened? You—”

The girl flung up her head, and though there was a glitter of tears in her eyes and her face was white under the moon, she stared defiance. “Don’t speak to me,” she said. “I never wish to see you again. I’m going to marry the Duke of Carmona.”

XXVIII

LET YOUR HEART SPEAK

Men do not kill themselves for such things. Fools, or cowards, or children may; but not men who are worthy the name. Yet there was no joy of life left in me, as I went out of the Alcázar garden, having had my answer.

Love cannot die in an hour, and I loved Monica still, though I said that she was not the girl to whom I had dedicated my soul in worship.

She had let me follow her, only to say at last: “I never wish to see you again. I’m going to marry the Duke of Carmona.”

After all, she had proved herself a docile daughter. She had seen what the house of a grandee of Spain can be like. She had seen the Blanca Laguna pearl. Poor child of eighteen years, brought up to know poverty and to loathe it; was I to let my love turn to hate because she was not an angel, but a woman like others?

A despairing pity and a sense of hopeless loss weighed upon my spirit with such heaviness as I had never known. Not only had I lost the girl I loved, but there was no such girl; she was a dream, and I had waked up. That was all; but it seemed the end of everything.

My errand in Spain was finished, or rather broken short. She did not want me any more. The sooner I took myself out of her life and let her forget what must now seem childish folly, the better. I might have known—she was so young; and she had warned me of disaster when she said, “Don’t leave me alone.”

I went to Olivero’s flat and changed my clothes; then to the hotel where Ropes and the car were waiting. For the first time since we had come into Spain, I drove, “like a demon,” Ropes’ surprised face said, though his tongue was discreet; and the wild rush through the air was wine to thirsty lips.

At the Cortijo de Santa Rufina they were all sitting in the _patio_ in floods of moonlight, the great awning which gave shade by day, fully rolled back.

“You see,” exclaimed Pilar, “we sat up for you. Well, how did it go off?”

I heard myself laughing. It did not feel a pleasant laugh, but I was glad to think that it sounded like any other. “Oh, it went off exactly as I might have expected,” I said, knowing that it was useless to hide my humiliation, though I might hide my misery. “And consequently, my car and I will also go off, to-morrow. As for Dick, he must do as he pleases; but I advise him, now he’s here, to stay for the _Semana Santa_.”

“What do you mean?” asked Pilar, almost letting fall the guitar on which she had been playing. “Has—has Lady Monica promised to go with you—to-morrow?”

“Not at all,” said I. “But what she’s promised to another man makes it better that I should go. She’s engaged to Carmona.”

“I don’t believe it,” cried Pilar.

“I shouldn’t, if anyone but herself had told me.”

“She said it?”

“In exactly those words. She said too, that she didn’t want to see me again.”

“Oh—oh!” breathed Pilar. “Thank _Heaven_ for that. You frightened me horribly—just for a moment.”

I stared. “And now—”

“Now I know there’s some mistake—dreadful, but not too dreadful to clear up.”

I laughed again, as bitterly as I felt this time. “Extraordinary idea! Because she says she doesn’t want to see me, there’s a mistake—”

“Of course. Surely you aren’t so cold-hearted, so disloyal, so—so _stupid_ as to believe her? But tell me instantly all about it—everything; every word; every look.”

“Easily done,” I said, “if it won’t bore you all. There were very few of either; but what there were left nothing to the imagination.”

“Imagination indeed!” exclaimed Pilar. “But go on.”

So I went on, and she listened to the end without interruption, as did the two others, who were only men, and therefore had no comments to make upon such matters.

As I told the wretched story in as few and as bald words as possible, Pilar sat grave-eyed, tense-lipped as Portia in the Court of Justice before her turn to plead. When I finished she was silent for a moment, I thought because, after all, she found herself with nothing to say. But, when her father in his compassion would have begun some murmur of consolation, she broke out quickly, “I suppose she _is_ engaged to the Duke, or she wouldn’t have said so.”

“Not much doubt of that,” I assented.

“Nor _any_ doubt of her real feelings. Poor little girl, I know she’s wishing she could die to-night. Those _devils!_ Yes, I _will_ say it, Papa. I shall be forgiven, for they _are_. They’ve told her some hateful lie, and made her so desperate she was ready to do anything. Why, it’s just come to me; there’s only one thing that would make a girl who loves a man do what she’s done.”

“What?” I broke in, breathless; for Pilar’s fire had flamed into my blood now, and I waited for her answer as a man waits for an antidote to poison.

“Believing he’s in love with someone else.”

“How could she believe that? Who is there—” I stopped. My eyes met Pilar’s, and she blushed, stammering as she hurried bravely on. “The greatest nonsense, of course. But—but—_oh_, don’t you remember how she looked that evening at Manzanares when we saw her last? So wistful, as if there were something on her mind she mustn’t tell? I caught her looking at me once or twice as if she were wondering—they must have begun, even then, to upset her mind, poor, lonely child; but the worst hadn’t happened; she was only a little doubtful. If you could have spoken to her, or if I—”

“I did write,” I said, “though I’ve always been afraid something went wrong with that letter.”

“Ah!” Pilar caught at this, and would have the whole story with every detail. I even found myself confessing my old presentiment, the fancy that Monica was calling for me to help her.

“I believe she was, calling and praying. Of course she never got the letter. What was in it? If you don’t mind my asking?”

“I said, a crisis seemed to be coming, and she must make up her mind to let me take her away.”

“A splendid letter to fall into her mother’s hands. Did you sign your real name?”

“No name at all. I wrote in a hurry, and—”

“That’s lucky. But even if you had, Lady Vale-Avon couldn’t have shown such a letter to the Duke, he’s too Spanish—too Moorish, I ought to say. She wouldn’t have dared, as she wants him for a son-in-law.”

“That occurred to me.”

“But there aren’t many other things she wouldn’t dare, to get rid of such a danger as you. If she got the letter—and I’m sure she did—there was your handwriting at her mercy. Supposing she—”

“I know what’s in your mind. But I don’t think such things are done—out of novels.”

“Oh, aren’t they; when people are clever enough? I know of one case myself. And the girl’s life was spoiled. Lady Monica’s shan’t be though, if I can help it.”

“You’re taking a great deal for granted,” I said. But I felt as if the radiance of heaven were pouring down upon me, instead of the pensive moonlight.

“Doesn’t your heart tell you I’m right?” cried Pilar.

“Yes!” I answered. “Yes, you good angel, it does.”

XXIX

THE GARDEN OF FLAMING LILIES

The voice of some maid servant singing a _copla_ waked me early in the morning, after an hour or two of sleep.

_El amor y la naranja_ _se parecen infinito;_ _Que por muy dulces que sean_ _de agrio tienen su poquito._(1)

Yes, always a little bitter, I said to myself. But if for me there were after all to be some sweetness left?

Last night before parting, the Cherub, Dick and I had talked matters over from every point of view. I was only too thankful to take the advice of one girl on behalf of another, and give to Monica the benefit of that doubt which at first had not seemed admissible. But even Pilar confessed that Monica’s engagement to Carmona made our part a hundred times more difficult.

Whatever her motive had been—revenge upon me for supposed disloyalty, dread of her mother, or awakened ambition--she had in any case consented to marry him, and Pilar suggested that the dinner invitations had been sent out as an excuse for a public announcement, which would more firmly bind her to her promise. The news would have flown all over Seville in twenty-four hours; when the King arrived on Tuesday Carmona would certainly lose no time in telling him; Lady Vale-Avon would not wait for Monica to write to the Princess, but would probably wire; and no matter what my private anxieties might be, for Monica’s sake I must do nothing openly. As for defying Carmona to use his knowledge of my true name, and challenging him to fight, that must not be thought of. Monica’s fair fame would never survive such a scandal, especially in Spain, where a girl’s reputation is as easily damaged as the down on a butterfly’s wing.