XV

[pg 101]XVHow the Duke Changed“Lecomte getting ready, sir,”were Ropes' first words to me next morning;“and I've brought our car to the door.”He had other news, too. An automobile had come in last night from Madrid, a sixty horse-power Merlin, and the chauffeur had reported snow half a metre deep on the mountains. The Merlin had stuck, he said, and had to be pulled out with oxen. Supposing the Duke intended going to Madrid instead of turning off by way of Salamanca, he—and incidentally we—seemed likely to come in for an adventure.We had all taken coffee and rolls in our rooms, as nobody dreams of going downstairs for breakfast in a Spanish hotel; and soon after eight we were jolting out of“Val”through streets as execrably paved as those by which we entered. We had kept Ropes waiting after his announcement only long enough to strap our luggage on the roof; and as the other car had luggage and passengers also to pick up, we were just in time to see it leaving the house of the Duke's relations with everyone on board.As the Lecomte took the road to the south on leaving town, it gave us an assurance that it would not make for Salamanca; but there was still doubt as to its movements. It could go to Madrid direct over the snow heights of the Sierra Guadarrama, or it could pay a visit to the Escurial. It might even halt there for the night; and as there were so many alternatives, we were anxious to keep our leader continually in view.The wind was bitter cold, and Pilar shivered in her cloak,[pg 102]which was not made for motoring. When Dick saw this, before I could speak he had his own fur-lined coat off, insisting that she should put it on.“I can take Casa Triana's,”said he,“since he's still posing as a soldier of Spain.”And a glance warned me not to blunder by asking why, in the name of common sense, she shouldn't have mine which I wasn't using, instead of his, which was on his back. Hewantedher to wear his coat, and hang common sense!After an instant's stupid bewilderment I saw this, and could hardly help chuckling. How many days had he known her? Two and a bit. At Biarritz he had given me sound advice on my affairs; couldn't understand this fall-in-love-at-sight business; thought a girl wasn't worth a red cent till she was twenty-two couldn't see himself being sentimental in any circumstances; was going to wait to make his choice till he went back to America; believed a man owed it to his own country to put his country-women first; and anyhow couldn't stand a girl who wasn't able to converse rationally. Yet Pilar, if she were to talk with him in his own tongue, must perforce limit her scintillations to“Varry nice, lo-vely, all raight”; while, if he wrestled with hers, he could scarcely go beyond phrase-book limits.The language of the eyes remained; but that has no place in the realm of common sense. My overcoat was singularly unbecoming to Dick; but he beamed with happiness in it, as he regarded Pilar cosily folded in his; and looking on the picture, certain things occurred to me which I might say to Dick when I got him alone. But after all, I thought I would keep them to laugh over myself.On this morning of biting wind and brilliant sun, there was still more dazzle of snow to illumine the mountain tops; and though the road was dull, the beauty of the atmospheric effects was worth coming to Spain to see. The road we travelled and the near meadows seemed, as we went speeding on, the only solid ground in sight; as if we had landed on an island floating at the rate of thirty miles an hour, through a vast[pg 103]sea of translucent tints that changed with the light, as an opal changes.Forests of strangely bunchy“umbrella”pines were blots of dark green ink splashed against the sky; and scarcely five minutes passed but we saw the finger of an old watch-tower pointing cloudward from a hill. Sometimes our road, dividing endless cornfields, stretched before us long and straight for miles ahead, over switchback after switchback, as if the hills chased each other but never succeeded in catching up. Then, when we had grown used to such an outlook, the road would twist so suddenly that it seemed to spring up in our faces. It would turn upon itself and writhe like a wounded cobra, before it was able to crawl on again.Ours was a silent, uninhabited world, without a house visible anywhere, save here and there some stony ruin—a landmark of the Peninsular War. One could but think that gnomes stole out at night from holes under the hills, to till the land for absentee owners; for the illimitable fields were cultivated down to the last inch. We shared a queer impression that we had strayed into a country which no human eye had seen for centuries; but when we crossed the broad Douro running to the Bay of Biscay and Oporto, and steered the car jerkily through the ragged village of Mojales, at an abrupt turn of the road we were in a different world—a desert of stones.Prehistoric giants had played with dolmens and cyclopean boulders, and left their toys scattered in confusion. Stonehenge might have been copied from one of their strange structures; and they had given later races a rough idea of forts and cities. Giant children had fashioned stone elephants, heads of warriors, dogs sitting on their haunches, granite drinking cups, and misshapen baskets, all of astonishing size. Or was it water, slow as the mills of the gods, and as sure, which had wrought all these fantastic designs, and piled these tremendous blocks one upon another?A high stone bridge spanned a rocky ravine carved by that slow power in a few leisure millions of years; and there, sheltered[pg 104]from the wind, would have been an ideal place for motorists to picnic. But the Duke did not picnic, therefore we must not. Following hard upon his heels we went on, up and up into the mountain world, still in the playground of vanished giants, winding along a road as wild as the way to Montenegro. Rising at regular intervals before us, on either side stood tall stone columns, sentinel-like, placed in pairs to guide wayfarers through white drifts in time of winter storms. The country was wooded, and began to have the air of a private park, though the heights were close above us now, and our road ascended steadily. From the scenery of Montenegro we came plump into the Black Forest; and Baden-Baden might have lain in the valley below these pointed mountains clothed in mourning pines.Squish! The brown slush of melted snow gushed out in fountains as our fat tyres ploughed through, and on either hand it lay unbroken in virgin purity beneath the pines. Half a mile higher, and even the traffic of heavy ox-carts and the sun's fierce fire had had no power to break the marble pavement. It was shattered and chipped, and carved into deep ruts by wooden wheels; but there were no muddy veins of brown. Ten minutes more, and our engine began to labour. Then, before there was time to count the moments, we were in snow to our axles.The motor's heart beat hard, but with a sturdy, dependable noise which comforted Pilar, who was half laughing, half frightened, at this her first adventure. At any instant now we might come upon the Lecomte held in the snow-trap which threatened to catch us.Ropes kept the car in the wide ruts made by ox-carts, but even with his good driving we swayed to right and left, leaving the rough track and ploughing into drifts dangerously near the precipice edge, or skidding as if we skated on polished ice, failing to grip the frozen surface.Now was the time to relieve the willing engine. Dick and I sprang out, and Colonel O'Donnel followed, though we would have persuaded him to keep his place. Only Pilar was left in the[pg 105]car, with Ropes driving, while we three men, knee deep in snow, set our shoulders to help the Gloria as she made the supreme effort. Pushing, and slipping at every step, our blood (which had run sluggishly with cold) racing through our veins, we were putting on a great spurt of united force, when gallantly rounding a bend we all but rammed the back of Carmona's car.There it was, stuck in a drift like a frozen wave; and there was Carmona himself up to his knees in diamond dust, gloomily superintending his chauffeur who packed snow into the radiator to cool the overheated motor.All the extra power of the Lecomte gave no advantage over the Gloria here. Fate had set the stage for us, and we must obey the cue. No ingenuity of Pilar's could hide us in the wings any longer, and we must play our parts as Destiny prompted.Only one thing was clear. Carmona could have had no idea until now that the O'Donnels (with that young soldier so like the Forbidden Man) were travelling in the red car whence he had already plucked a suspected passenger. The coincidence would seem strange to him; and if he were sure enough of his ground to risk another error, he would probably denounce me to the police in the next big town. Disguising my outcast self as an officer in a Spanish regiment would not be a point in my favour; but—he could do nothing now. Monica was here, and the moment was mine.There was a savage joy in the situation, born of exaltation, of the high altitude, and of uncertainty as to what might come next.“Shall you keep out of the way?”asked Dick; for we were still screened from Carmona's sight by our own car, which Ropes had stopped with a grinding of the brake; and Pilar's face was veiled.“Not I. I'm going to have some fun,”I answered.“It must come sooner or later, better sooner, or what's the good of playing Cristobal O'Donnel?”With that, I appeared from behind the car, and the others were following, while Pilar leaned out in anxious expectancy.[pg 106]“How do you do?”said I, in Andaluz as lazy as the other Cristóbal could have used. I took off my cap to the ladies, and so did Dick and the Cherub, exposing heated foreheads, damp from honest toil.“Sorry to find you in such a difficulty. But we'll soon get you out of that, won't we, Señor Waring? Here are three of us with stout shoulders and willing hearts.”“Four, counting my chauffeur,”said Dick in English, playing up to my lead, since there was no stopping me now.“We're delighted to do anything we can.”Carmona glared as an animal glares when it is at bay; only, an animal can attack his enemies, and he could not attack us; for he was not sure whether we were enemies or no, and whether he would not be making a fool of himself if he let us know what passed in his brain.It was evident that he thought very hard for a moment, and was of two minds as to what he had better do. But suddenly the baited look vanished from his face, as a shadow is chased away by the sun, and I guessed that a course of action had occurred to him with which he was well satisfied. This seemed ominous for me, and I would have given something to read his thoughts.He answered our“How do you do?”with great cordiality—for him; said that he had been taken by surprise, at first, as he had no idea the motoring tour of which Señorita Pilar spoke would begin so soon, or bring us upon his track. It was a good thing for him, however, that we were here, and not only was he pleased to see us for our own sakes, but would be glad to accept our kind offer.Meanwhile Pilar had pushed up her veil, and she and Monica were exchanging greetings. As for Lady Vale-Avon, her veil was up, too, and her lorgnettes at her eyes. I did not doubt that she and the Duke had compared impressions concerning our family party, after the episode at Burgos, impressions startlingly confirmed now, and Carmona's cordiality in such circumstances must have puzzled her. As to the Duchess, her large face was[pg 107]hidden behind a thick screen of lead-coloured tissue, and I could judge nothing of her feelings.When Monica heard the proposal for propelling the grey car through the drifts, she had the door open in an instant, and would have been out in the deep snow, if we had not stopped her.“You must all stay where you are,”said Carmona hurriedly, fearing, perhaps, that some opportunity for a word would be snatched in spite of him, if I were really Casa Triana.“The weight of three women makes no difference whatever; isn't that true, señor?”and he turned to Dick, who, according to our story, was the owner of the red automobile as well as the host of the party.Of course Dick agreed, and so did we all, that the ladies were not on any account to get out. The Duke's chauffeur jumped into his place again, and, with a twist of the starting handle, the tired motor quivered to its iron entrails. There was a sudden awaking of carburetor, pistons, sparking-plugs, valves, trembler, each part which had been resting after the long pull, striving to obey its master. With a sighing scream of the gearing, the car stumbled forward and up, our united force pressed into service. Staggering, plunging, pushing, we gave all the help we could, and for a few minutes it seemed that with our aid the motor would claw its way to the highest point.Our hearts drummed in our breasts, and sent the hot blood jumping to our heads as if in sympathy with the mighty struggle of the engine. But the Lecomte's forty horses, and the strength and goodwill of five men—counting Carmona, who did as little work as he could—were not enough. The wheels sank to the axles, whizzing round in the snow without propelling the car; with the motor unable to do its part, we men alone could not do all. The automobile would not budge for all our pushing; and, seeing that labour was lost, we stopped to breathe and raise our eyebrows questioningly at one another. Carmona, alarmed at finding that his chestnuts could not be pulled out of the fire by[pg 108]any cat's-paws at his service, wondered audibly what he ought to do.“Someone who came to Valladolid last night was hauled through the drifts by oxen,”said I. And even as I spoke, like a ram caught in the bushes ready for the sacrifice, I spied in the white distance the black silhouette of an enormous ox.He was not alone, for a more penetrating glance showed that he had a yoke-fellow as big and black as himself; and guided by a red-sashed boy in scarf and shawl they advanced towards us slowly but so surely that I suspected something more than a coincidence. The great lumbering animals were like blobs of ink against the snow, and the lithe figure of the boy made a fine spot of colour as he walked before his beasts, his stick to their noses as if it were a magnet which they, anchored head to head with a beam of wood, were compelled to follow.It flashed into my mind that this youth and his oxen were not wandering through mountain snow-drifts for nothing. The wolves which howl in these same wild fastnesses on a winter night scent prey; and so I thought did the boy, with the trifling substitute of petrol for blood. This youth had made a good haul (in every sense of the word) by accident yesterday; was out searching for other hauls to-day, and would be while the snow lasted.We hailed him. He feigned surprise, and hesitated, as if to enhance his value. Then, casting down long lashes as he listened to our proposal, pretended to consider pros and cons. It would be a terrible strain for his animals to drag such a great weight, but—oh, certainly they would beableto do it. They were docile and strong. Every day nearly they drew heavy loads of cut logs over the mountains. For twenty pesetas he would risk injuring his oxen, but not arealless; and they would drag the grey car to the top of the pass, that he could promise.“What extortion!”protested Carmona, who is not famed for generosity, except when something can be made out of it.“Oh, he's too handsome to beat down!”pleaded Monica.[pg 109]That settled it. To please her he would have given twice twenty pesetas for half the distance. The boy was engaged without further haggling; the animals were harnessed to the big Lecomte with rope which the youth“happened”to have; and with a thrilling cry of“A-r-r-r-i! O-lah!”he struck the two black backs with his goad.“I can't bear to see it!”Monica cried, covering her eyes, as the great heads were lowered to adjust the strain, and every muscle in the powerful, docile bodies writhed and bunched with the tremendous effort. Big as they were, it seemed impossible that two oxen could do for the car, with passengers and luggage, what its own engine refused to do; nevertheless the huge thing moved, at first with a shuddering jerk, then with a steady, if lumbering crawl.“O-lah!”shouted the boy;“thump”on the thick hide over the straining muscles fell the goad, and thus the car lurched through the deep snow, all of us following except Ropes, who having poured melted snow into the radiator, and let the cooling stream flow through the waterpipes, was bringing on the Gloria slowly, by her own power. She had now but two passengers, and not half as much luggage as the Lecomte, which perhaps explained her prowess; nevertheless I was proud.“Brava, Gloria!”I should have liked to shout.I could now have pushed ahead, and keeping pace with Carmona's car, as the oxen struggled nobly up the pass, have tried for a word or two with Monica. But perhaps Lady Vale-Avon expected such a move on the part of the troublesome young officer; and by way of precaution she had crowded near to the girl in the tonneau. A conversation worth having would have been hopeless thus spied upon, and I disappointed the chaperon by making no such attempt.To my surprise, Carmona walked with us, instead of forging on beside his own car. His friendliness puzzled me. Each look directed at my face was sharp as a gimlet, though his words were genial; but the final shock came when he announced that he was[pg 110]bound for the Escurial, and asked if we would like to join his party.“I know the palace like a book—better than I know most books,”said he;“and if you've never been, I can get you into places not usually shown.”The Cherub thanked Heaven that he had never been; and far would it be from him to go to-day or any other day. He had beheld the Escurial from outside, and had been depressed to the verge of tears. Often since he had consoled himself for various misfortunes by reflecting that, at worst, he was not enduring them at the Escurial. But he would sit in the automobile and compose himself to doze while his dear children and friends were martyred in the Monastery.“You're very good to personally conduct us,”Dick answered the Duke,“but we've no time for the Escurial.”“It will be worth while to make time,”I hurried to break in, though Dick glared a warning which said,“You silly ass, don't you see the man's laying a trap, and you're falling into it?”I was ready to risk that trap, and realizing that I meant to see the thing through, Dick urged no further objections.[pg 111]XVIA Secret of the King'sPilar said that the oxen were idiotic dears to break their hearts for nothing, not even a percentage on the twenty pesetas. But four-footed beasts are tragically conscientious, and these farmyard martyrs accomplished their task without a groan, while the Gloria crept up close behind on her own power.I thanked the patron saint of cow creation when the straining brutes got to the top. The summit of the pass was crowned by a lion on a granite pedestal; a lion with a cold air of pride in his mission of marking the limit between Old Castile and New. For me also he marked something for which I owed him gratitude; my deeper advance into the heart of my own land.Close to our resting-place at the top of the pass there was a rude hut, and one or two wagons which had strained up from the other side were halting their smoking teams. Here, seated in the car again, as we waited to see the oxen unyoked and the boy paid, a girl came out from the little house with a large volume, in which she asked us to sign our names. The Cherub scrawled something; and as Dick was scribbling, Carmona strolled across, to see whether or no I entrusted my name to the book. I had meant not to do so, but now I would have changed my mind had not Colonel O'Donnel stopped me.“I wrote your name, Cristóbal,”said he, in his ambrosial voice; and the situation was saved. Carmona made some commonplace remark to account for his approach, and walked away with a self-conscious[pg 112]back, as Pilar's glance and Monica's crossed the distance between the two automobiles and met mischievously.The grey car took the lead again, and at a turn of the road it seemed that the whole world lay at our feet; yet it was not even all of Old Castile, so vast a country is my Spain.Far as the eye could travel spread the fair land, green with the tender green of spring, yellow with patches of golden sand, darkly tufted with woods; struck with flying shafts of light, ringed in with ethereal blue.Nothing could steal from me this illuminated missal of memories, and were I to be banished to-morrow, I should have Spain to keep in my heart, I said, as we rushed down the steep, winding way that serpentined along the southern slope of the Guadarrama. A breakneck road it was, but nobly engineered, twisting back upon itself in many coils, letting us fly with the speed of a bird to lower levels; and it seemed that scarcely had we sunk over the brink of the mountain than we were at the turn on the right which would lead to the Escurial.Straight before us, rising out of the bare mountain side and seeming a part of it, towered and stretched a building vaster than any I had seen even in the limitless spaces of dreamland. Were it not for its cold regularity, I should have thought myself approaching another desert of giants who made toys of monoliths and obelisks; but these appalling domes and towers could be the work of man alone. There was no toying here; all was forbidding and gloomy; for this was the Escurial—immense, sinister, as if fashioned from the grim product of those iron mines which gave its name.I could imagine the fanatical satisfaction Philip's dry mind had found in planning this monument to represent the gridiron on which Saint Lawrence was martyred. He who was to stand in history as the great Inquisitor, must build his monastery and palace in honour of a martyr! But Philip was the last man to have a sense of humour; and it was like him to appease an injured saint by giving him a church a thousand times bigger[pg 113]than the one destroyed on Saint Lawrence's own day, in the battle of San Quentin.“Wouldn't the Escurial be hideous if it were anywhere else but just here?”asked Pilar.She was right; for on the Sierra it seemed an expression of the Sierra; and in spite of Philip rather than because of him, it was splendid in the melancholy strength which made it a brother of mountains.We lunched on extremely Spanish food at afondaopposite the Escurial; and when the time came for sightseeing—a time for us, but not for the public—the Duke began by marshalling us all, except the weary Duchess and the lazy Cherub, through the great door guarded by Saint Lawrence. Once within, we saw the treasures, as a bird in flight sees the beauties of a town over which he swoops; but we did see them, and once I had three words and one look from Monica, before it occurred to Lady Vale-Avon to link an arm in her daughter's, in a sudden overflow of maternal affection.Carmona had made a point of the“influence”which could open for us doors that, for others, would remain shut; and he did smuggle us into the Library of Manuscripts, the Queen's Oratory, and the Capilla Mayor to see the royal tombs. But after we had stopped longer than he wished in the church, and the Choir, where Philip learned that Lepanto had saved Europe from the Turks, and listened to the sad music of Mary Stuart's requiem, the Duke promised something still better, in the palace.“What you shall see there,”he said,“is a secret. It was a secret of King Philip's—so great a secret that even the writers of guide-books know nothing of it; while, if a tourist should have heard a rumour and asked a question, the attendants would say,‘There's no such thing in existence.’Only the Royal Family know, a few privileged people about the Court, and the guardians of the Escurial. As for me, I was told by someone here—someone whom I myself placed in the palace.”My curiosity was excited; and even Dick, who resented this[pg 114]expedition, looked interested as we arrived at the palace—the great gridiron's handle. At the entrance Carmona separated himself from the rest of the party, saying that he must have a few words in private with the attendant who would show the rooms of Philip the Second. He walked ahead, engaged the brown-liveried guide in low-voiced conversation, and seemed to ask a question with some eagerness.Observing the pantomime from a distance, I fancied that, for some reason, Carmona was to be denied the privilege of which he had boasted; but, apparently, he did not intend to accept defeat without a struggle. He and the guide moved on, then stopped again to argue—this time with their backs to us; but, from the action of Carmona's elbows, I judged that he put his hand into his pocket. Five or six minutes later he returned, to announce that after some difficulty he had succeeded in getting his own way. We might go, unattended, into the private apartments of Philip the Second; and while we were there, other visitors would be kept out.“If there are any, they'll be taken another round,”said Carmona,“and won't be ready to come into the King's rooms until we're ready to come out.”The guide led us down the narrow staircase to the outer door of Philip's suite, then slipped away, shutting the door behind him. Lady Vale-Avon and Monica (the mother still clasping her daughter's arm), Pilar, Dick, Carmona, and I were now alone between the gloomy walls behind which the bigot and despot had lived his miserable life and died his miserable death.There was a chill in the sombre place which froze the spirit; yet I, for one, did not feel sad. I was conscious only of an excited expectancy, as if I were waiting for something to happen.We let our imagination set the meagre form of Philip in his chair, or by the desk at which he used to write; examined the grim relics of his monk-like existence; and finally moved to the death-chamber, set like a stage-box at the theatre, beside the high altar of the chapel.So small was the room that it was filled by our little party of six;[pg 115]yet I felt there another presence which none of us could see—a grey ghost agonising for his sins, through a bleak eternity.Monica felt it too, for she shivered, and exclaimed,“Let us go. This room seems haunted with evil. I can't breathe in it.”“But now for the secret,”said Carmona.“Would you guess at any hidden opening in these walls?”We stared critically about, and I began to test the wainscot, but the Duke stopped me.“You'd never find the place,”he said;“and I promised the person who told me not to give away the secret; but that doesn't prevent me from showing you what's behind the door.”He moved close to the wall, stood for an instant, then stepped back, as we heard a slight clicking sound, like the snap of a spring on an old box-lid. At the same time a part of the wainscoting rolled away, leaving a narrow aperture.It was dark on the other side, but Carmona took a gold match-box from his pocket and struck a bunch of little waxfosforos.“Philip had this cell made for a place of penance and self-torture,”he said,“and it's just as it used to be during his lifetime, before he was too ill to go in any more. His twisted wire scourge is there, with his blood on it, his horsehair shirt, and a girdle bristling with small, sharp spikes. Will you have a look, Lady Vale-Avon? I can't go with you, for the cell isn't big enough for two, but I'll hold the matches at the door.”Lady Vale-Avon is of the type of woman who enjoys seeing such things as these; and though she would not have tortured herself had she lived in feudal days, I am sure she would have dined calmly over an underground dungeon where an enemy—an inconvenient wretch like me, for instance—suffered the pangs of starvation.She squeezed into the cell, descending a couple of steps, remained for two or three minutes, and came out, pronouncing it extremely interesting.“Now, Lady Monica, it's your turn,”said Carmona; but Monica drew back,“I hate seeing torture-things,”said she,[pg 116]“and blood, even wicked old blood like Philip's, which I used to think, when I read about him in history, I'd love to shed. No, I won't go in, thank you.”Pilar also refused, for if she went she would certainly have a nightmare and dream she was walled up; thus there remained only the three men to inspect the hidden horrors.Carmona held his match-box to me, saying that when we had seen the place he would look in to refresh his recollections. But Dick calmly helped himself to severalfosforosand took first turn, probably suspecting something in the way of anoubliette, especially prepared for me.He reappeared presently, however, his suspicions allayed.“Beastly hole,”he remarked;“almost bad enough for Philip, though he did grill some of my best ancestors.”I took a couple of matches, lighting them on the Duke's box; then, bending my head low, and pushing in one shoulder at a time, I squirmed through the aperture. In so doing, however, I contrived to trip over Carmona's foot, which must have been thrust forward, staggered against the opposite wall of the narrow cell, and lost both my lighted vestas. Carmona exclaimed, I stumbled, and almost simultaneously the door slid into place with a sharp click.There was not space to fall at length. I merely lost my balance, and saved my head from a bump by shielding it with a raised arm, I steadied myself in a second or two; but I was in black darkness. Outside I could hear a confused murmur of voices, and would have given something to know what Dick was saying at the moment.I was thinking that I should not like to be a prisoner in this hole (only large enough for the swing of Philip's scourge) for many hours on end, when there came an imperative tapping.“Holloa!”I answered, expecting to hear Dick speak in return; but it was Carmona's voice which replied. Evidently he was speaking with his mouth close to the secret door.“I'm very sorry for this accident,”said he distinctly.“When[pg 117]you stumbled, you knocked my arm, and made me touch the spring. Unfortunately the door closed with such a crash, that the spring seems out of order, and I can't move it. But if you'll be patient a few minutes, I'll look for an attendant who understands the thing, to bail you out of gaol.”If I had been Lieutenant Cristóbal O'Donnel I would have heard no more in the rhyming junction of those words“gaol”and“bail”than met the ear, but being the man I was—the man he suspected me to be—I did hear more; and I believed that he wished me to catch a double meaning.“Does he mean to hand me over to the police now, on suspicion?”I wondered in my black cell—“before Monica's eyes?”But aloud I said,“Thanks; don't be too long, or I shall be tempted to smash the door.”“You'll find that impossible,”answered Carmona.“Don't worry if I seem to be gone an age. There's only one man on duty to-day who knows the secret of this room; I asked for him when we came, but his comrade said he was away on leave till four o'clock. It must be that now, and I'll have him here as soon as possible. He will be the more pleased to set you free, as he's an old friend of yours. You remember little Rafael Calmenare?”I was silent, seeing, as if by the glare of lightning, the whole design of the trap, and seeming to see also the triumph which must be in Carmona's eyes. But the pause had not lengthened to a second, when I heard Pilar's voice, speaking also close to the door.“Of course you remember, Cristóbal. Rafael Calmenare of the Duke'sganaderia. But it's a long time since he went away.”“After he was gored by Nero and lost his health, through the influence of a friend at Court I got him a place here,”I heard Carmona say. Then raising his voice for my ears, he went on,“Poor Rafael will be pleased to see you again. You must have played with him when a boy. I'm off to find him now.”Silence followed these last words. I could picture the consternation of Dick and Pilar. Neither could do anything to help[pg 118]me, nor could I help myself. I could but wait in this suffocating black hole for the moment when a stranger should give me light, and exclaim,“This is not Don Cristóbal!”Almost I admired Carmona for his quick wit. After a few moments of rage, at sight of the suspected man of Burgos Cathedral on his track in the red motor-car, the thought of the Escurial and his old servant must have sprung into his mind.Had Calmenare been available at first, Carmona would have been spared the trouble of shutting me up in Philip the Bigot's torture-chamber; but hard pressed for an excuse to keep us at the Escurial till his man came back, he had put me where I could be kept while needed. And now that he was gone in search of Rafael, we three loyal comrades could not discuss the situation, because of Lady Vale-Avon's presence.A brilliant stroke of Carmona's to have me betrayed by another than himself, so that Monica might not bear him a grudge! Who was this person masquerading as an officer of the Spanish army? would be the first question of the police. And the answer need not be long in coming. The Duke had reason to congratulate himself; I had been a fool to drop like a fly into his net, and now that I was in, I saw no way out.“Oh, how I wish we could open the secret door!”I heard Monica exclaim.“I can't even see exactly where it is now,”Pilar said.“Cristóbal?”“Yes,”I answered.“Poor little Rafael; a good fellow, wasn't he?”“Very good,”I replied. To what end was she working? I wondered. But I was not to be made wiser. Before she had time to finish the hint I heard Carmona speaking.“I've sent for Calmenare, who has returned, and will be here in a few minutes,”he called to me. It was like him to hurry back, so that by no possible means could the three suspected ones reach any understanding.The moments dragged on, and I could have lashed myself[pg 119]with Philip's scourge in fury at the rashness which might involve the whole O'Donnel family in my disaster. Never had I been able to think less clearly; but perhaps it was the stifling atmosphere of the cell which made me feel that fingers in a mailed glove were clenched round my temples.Outside, voices buzzed; but those who spoke must have stood at a distance, for I could catch no words. Then, at last, there was a new voice in the room. Calmenare had come.“How do you do, Don Rafael?”Pilar exclaimed, as politely as if she had addressed an equal.“I'm glad to see you again. I've been waiting for you impatiently. Only think,my dear brother Cristóbal, whom you know so well, is in that dreadful place and can't get out, because the Señor Duque shut him in—by mistake—and broke the spring.”“I do not find that it is broken, señorita,”answered the new voice.“I couldn't make it work,”Carmona said hastily.Click! went the spring under skilled fingers. The door sliding back gave me a rush of light and air which set me blinking for a second or two; and there I stood at the stranger's mercy.What I saw, when my suddenly contracted pupils expanded, was a little man in the palace livery; a pale little man with insignificant features, and large, steady eyes. There was absolutely no expression in his face as for one brief instant our glances met. Then—“God be with you, Don Cristóbal,”said he.“I am glad to have been even of this slight service. I hope, señorito, you have not suffered from lack of air?”“Very little,”said I. I held out my hand. He took it respectfully.“Is it long since you saw each other?”asked Carmona, sallow and red by turns.“About two years only, Señor Duque,”replied his ex-servant, expressionless as before, and quietly respectful to all.“I could not forget the date, for the Señor Colonel and the señorita, as well as the señorito himself, were always very good to me.”[pg 120]The Duke was silenced. The test invented by himself had failed. Calmenare accepted me as Cristóbal O'Donnel; he was obliged to accept me too—at least for the present.“Shall we get out of this place?”he said to Lady Vale-Avon.She swept her daughter with her; but Monica had a backward look for me, sparkling now with malice for Carmona, radiant with relief for Casa Triana.We said good-bye to Calmenare in the Duke's presence; and I would have pressed a gold piece into his hand for“opening my prison door,”but he would not have it. Afterwards, while we followed the grey car on the downhill road to Madrid, Pilar told the whole story with dramatic effect to the Cherub.“My one hope was in Rafael,”she said.“I was good to him, you remember, when he was ill. And he and I had a great sympathy over Corcito, the dear grey bull. I prayed he'd never forgiven the Duke for that crime, and that he'd still be grateful to me. Well, I looked Rafael straight in the eyes when I said,‘My brother Cristóbal is in that place, shut up by the Duke, who has broken the spring.’With all my soul I willed him to understand, and he did.‘If the señorita chooses to have a strange gentleman for her brother, he is her brother for me,’is what he said to himself; no more! But what if hehadn't?”“That's where I should have come in,”remarked Dick.“What would you have done?”asked Pilar, breathless.“I don't know,”said Dick.“I only know I should havedoneit; and that if I had, maybe Carmona wouldn't have been feeling as well as he feels now.”

[pg 101]XVHow the Duke Changed“Lecomte getting ready, sir,”were Ropes' first words to me next morning;“and I've brought our car to the door.”He had other news, too. An automobile had come in last night from Madrid, a sixty horse-power Merlin, and the chauffeur had reported snow half a metre deep on the mountains. The Merlin had stuck, he said, and had to be pulled out with oxen. Supposing the Duke intended going to Madrid instead of turning off by way of Salamanca, he—and incidentally we—seemed likely to come in for an adventure.We had all taken coffee and rolls in our rooms, as nobody dreams of going downstairs for breakfast in a Spanish hotel; and soon after eight we were jolting out of“Val”through streets as execrably paved as those by which we entered. We had kept Ropes waiting after his announcement only long enough to strap our luggage on the roof; and as the other car had luggage and passengers also to pick up, we were just in time to see it leaving the house of the Duke's relations with everyone on board.As the Lecomte took the road to the south on leaving town, it gave us an assurance that it would not make for Salamanca; but there was still doubt as to its movements. It could go to Madrid direct over the snow heights of the Sierra Guadarrama, or it could pay a visit to the Escurial. It might even halt there for the night; and as there were so many alternatives, we were anxious to keep our leader continually in view.The wind was bitter cold, and Pilar shivered in her cloak,[pg 102]which was not made for motoring. When Dick saw this, before I could speak he had his own fur-lined coat off, insisting that she should put it on.“I can take Casa Triana's,”said he,“since he's still posing as a soldier of Spain.”And a glance warned me not to blunder by asking why, in the name of common sense, she shouldn't have mine which I wasn't using, instead of his, which was on his back. Hewantedher to wear his coat, and hang common sense!After an instant's stupid bewilderment I saw this, and could hardly help chuckling. How many days had he known her? Two and a bit. At Biarritz he had given me sound advice on my affairs; couldn't understand this fall-in-love-at-sight business; thought a girl wasn't worth a red cent till she was twenty-two couldn't see himself being sentimental in any circumstances; was going to wait to make his choice till he went back to America; believed a man owed it to his own country to put his country-women first; and anyhow couldn't stand a girl who wasn't able to converse rationally. Yet Pilar, if she were to talk with him in his own tongue, must perforce limit her scintillations to“Varry nice, lo-vely, all raight”; while, if he wrestled with hers, he could scarcely go beyond phrase-book limits.The language of the eyes remained; but that has no place in the realm of common sense. My overcoat was singularly unbecoming to Dick; but he beamed with happiness in it, as he regarded Pilar cosily folded in his; and looking on the picture, certain things occurred to me which I might say to Dick when I got him alone. But after all, I thought I would keep them to laugh over myself.On this morning of biting wind and brilliant sun, there was still more dazzle of snow to illumine the mountain tops; and though the road was dull, the beauty of the atmospheric effects was worth coming to Spain to see. The road we travelled and the near meadows seemed, as we went speeding on, the only solid ground in sight; as if we had landed on an island floating at the rate of thirty miles an hour, through a vast[pg 103]sea of translucent tints that changed with the light, as an opal changes.Forests of strangely bunchy“umbrella”pines were blots of dark green ink splashed against the sky; and scarcely five minutes passed but we saw the finger of an old watch-tower pointing cloudward from a hill. Sometimes our road, dividing endless cornfields, stretched before us long and straight for miles ahead, over switchback after switchback, as if the hills chased each other but never succeeded in catching up. Then, when we had grown used to such an outlook, the road would twist so suddenly that it seemed to spring up in our faces. It would turn upon itself and writhe like a wounded cobra, before it was able to crawl on again.Ours was a silent, uninhabited world, without a house visible anywhere, save here and there some stony ruin—a landmark of the Peninsular War. One could but think that gnomes stole out at night from holes under the hills, to till the land for absentee owners; for the illimitable fields were cultivated down to the last inch. We shared a queer impression that we had strayed into a country which no human eye had seen for centuries; but when we crossed the broad Douro running to the Bay of Biscay and Oporto, and steered the car jerkily through the ragged village of Mojales, at an abrupt turn of the road we were in a different world—a desert of stones.Prehistoric giants had played with dolmens and cyclopean boulders, and left their toys scattered in confusion. Stonehenge might have been copied from one of their strange structures; and they had given later races a rough idea of forts and cities. Giant children had fashioned stone elephants, heads of warriors, dogs sitting on their haunches, granite drinking cups, and misshapen baskets, all of astonishing size. Or was it water, slow as the mills of the gods, and as sure, which had wrought all these fantastic designs, and piled these tremendous blocks one upon another?A high stone bridge spanned a rocky ravine carved by that slow power in a few leisure millions of years; and there, sheltered[pg 104]from the wind, would have been an ideal place for motorists to picnic. But the Duke did not picnic, therefore we must not. Following hard upon his heels we went on, up and up into the mountain world, still in the playground of vanished giants, winding along a road as wild as the way to Montenegro. Rising at regular intervals before us, on either side stood tall stone columns, sentinel-like, placed in pairs to guide wayfarers through white drifts in time of winter storms. The country was wooded, and began to have the air of a private park, though the heights were close above us now, and our road ascended steadily. From the scenery of Montenegro we came plump into the Black Forest; and Baden-Baden might have lain in the valley below these pointed mountains clothed in mourning pines.Squish! The brown slush of melted snow gushed out in fountains as our fat tyres ploughed through, and on either hand it lay unbroken in virgin purity beneath the pines. Half a mile higher, and even the traffic of heavy ox-carts and the sun's fierce fire had had no power to break the marble pavement. It was shattered and chipped, and carved into deep ruts by wooden wheels; but there were no muddy veins of brown. Ten minutes more, and our engine began to labour. Then, before there was time to count the moments, we were in snow to our axles.The motor's heart beat hard, but with a sturdy, dependable noise which comforted Pilar, who was half laughing, half frightened, at this her first adventure. At any instant now we might come upon the Lecomte held in the snow-trap which threatened to catch us.Ropes kept the car in the wide ruts made by ox-carts, but even with his good driving we swayed to right and left, leaving the rough track and ploughing into drifts dangerously near the precipice edge, or skidding as if we skated on polished ice, failing to grip the frozen surface.Now was the time to relieve the willing engine. Dick and I sprang out, and Colonel O'Donnel followed, though we would have persuaded him to keep his place. Only Pilar was left in the[pg 105]car, with Ropes driving, while we three men, knee deep in snow, set our shoulders to help the Gloria as she made the supreme effort. Pushing, and slipping at every step, our blood (which had run sluggishly with cold) racing through our veins, we were putting on a great spurt of united force, when gallantly rounding a bend we all but rammed the back of Carmona's car.There it was, stuck in a drift like a frozen wave; and there was Carmona himself up to his knees in diamond dust, gloomily superintending his chauffeur who packed snow into the radiator to cool the overheated motor.All the extra power of the Lecomte gave no advantage over the Gloria here. Fate had set the stage for us, and we must obey the cue. No ingenuity of Pilar's could hide us in the wings any longer, and we must play our parts as Destiny prompted.Only one thing was clear. Carmona could have had no idea until now that the O'Donnels (with that young soldier so like the Forbidden Man) were travelling in the red car whence he had already plucked a suspected passenger. The coincidence would seem strange to him; and if he were sure enough of his ground to risk another error, he would probably denounce me to the police in the next big town. Disguising my outcast self as an officer in a Spanish regiment would not be a point in my favour; but—he could do nothing now. Monica was here, and the moment was mine.There was a savage joy in the situation, born of exaltation, of the high altitude, and of uncertainty as to what might come next.“Shall you keep out of the way?”asked Dick; for we were still screened from Carmona's sight by our own car, which Ropes had stopped with a grinding of the brake; and Pilar's face was veiled.“Not I. I'm going to have some fun,”I answered.“It must come sooner or later, better sooner, or what's the good of playing Cristobal O'Donnel?”With that, I appeared from behind the car, and the others were following, while Pilar leaned out in anxious expectancy.[pg 106]“How do you do?”said I, in Andaluz as lazy as the other Cristóbal could have used. I took off my cap to the ladies, and so did Dick and the Cherub, exposing heated foreheads, damp from honest toil.“Sorry to find you in such a difficulty. But we'll soon get you out of that, won't we, Señor Waring? Here are three of us with stout shoulders and willing hearts.”“Four, counting my chauffeur,”said Dick in English, playing up to my lead, since there was no stopping me now.“We're delighted to do anything we can.”Carmona glared as an animal glares when it is at bay; only, an animal can attack his enemies, and he could not attack us; for he was not sure whether we were enemies or no, and whether he would not be making a fool of himself if he let us know what passed in his brain.It was evident that he thought very hard for a moment, and was of two minds as to what he had better do. But suddenly the baited look vanished from his face, as a shadow is chased away by the sun, and I guessed that a course of action had occurred to him with which he was well satisfied. This seemed ominous for me, and I would have given something to read his thoughts.He answered our“How do you do?”with great cordiality—for him; said that he had been taken by surprise, at first, as he had no idea the motoring tour of which Señorita Pilar spoke would begin so soon, or bring us upon his track. It was a good thing for him, however, that we were here, and not only was he pleased to see us for our own sakes, but would be glad to accept our kind offer.Meanwhile Pilar had pushed up her veil, and she and Monica were exchanging greetings. As for Lady Vale-Avon, her veil was up, too, and her lorgnettes at her eyes. I did not doubt that she and the Duke had compared impressions concerning our family party, after the episode at Burgos, impressions startlingly confirmed now, and Carmona's cordiality in such circumstances must have puzzled her. As to the Duchess, her large face was[pg 107]hidden behind a thick screen of lead-coloured tissue, and I could judge nothing of her feelings.When Monica heard the proposal for propelling the grey car through the drifts, she had the door open in an instant, and would have been out in the deep snow, if we had not stopped her.“You must all stay where you are,”said Carmona hurriedly, fearing, perhaps, that some opportunity for a word would be snatched in spite of him, if I were really Casa Triana.“The weight of three women makes no difference whatever; isn't that true, señor?”and he turned to Dick, who, according to our story, was the owner of the red automobile as well as the host of the party.Of course Dick agreed, and so did we all, that the ladies were not on any account to get out. The Duke's chauffeur jumped into his place again, and, with a twist of the starting handle, the tired motor quivered to its iron entrails. There was a sudden awaking of carburetor, pistons, sparking-plugs, valves, trembler, each part which had been resting after the long pull, striving to obey its master. With a sighing scream of the gearing, the car stumbled forward and up, our united force pressed into service. Staggering, plunging, pushing, we gave all the help we could, and for a few minutes it seemed that with our aid the motor would claw its way to the highest point.Our hearts drummed in our breasts, and sent the hot blood jumping to our heads as if in sympathy with the mighty struggle of the engine. But the Lecomte's forty horses, and the strength and goodwill of five men—counting Carmona, who did as little work as he could—were not enough. The wheels sank to the axles, whizzing round in the snow without propelling the car; with the motor unable to do its part, we men alone could not do all. The automobile would not budge for all our pushing; and, seeing that labour was lost, we stopped to breathe and raise our eyebrows questioningly at one another. Carmona, alarmed at finding that his chestnuts could not be pulled out of the fire by[pg 108]any cat's-paws at his service, wondered audibly what he ought to do.“Someone who came to Valladolid last night was hauled through the drifts by oxen,”said I. And even as I spoke, like a ram caught in the bushes ready for the sacrifice, I spied in the white distance the black silhouette of an enormous ox.He was not alone, for a more penetrating glance showed that he had a yoke-fellow as big and black as himself; and guided by a red-sashed boy in scarf and shawl they advanced towards us slowly but so surely that I suspected something more than a coincidence. The great lumbering animals were like blobs of ink against the snow, and the lithe figure of the boy made a fine spot of colour as he walked before his beasts, his stick to their noses as if it were a magnet which they, anchored head to head with a beam of wood, were compelled to follow.It flashed into my mind that this youth and his oxen were not wandering through mountain snow-drifts for nothing. The wolves which howl in these same wild fastnesses on a winter night scent prey; and so I thought did the boy, with the trifling substitute of petrol for blood. This youth had made a good haul (in every sense of the word) by accident yesterday; was out searching for other hauls to-day, and would be while the snow lasted.We hailed him. He feigned surprise, and hesitated, as if to enhance his value. Then, casting down long lashes as he listened to our proposal, pretended to consider pros and cons. It would be a terrible strain for his animals to drag such a great weight, but—oh, certainly they would beableto do it. They were docile and strong. Every day nearly they drew heavy loads of cut logs over the mountains. For twenty pesetas he would risk injuring his oxen, but not arealless; and they would drag the grey car to the top of the pass, that he could promise.“What extortion!”protested Carmona, who is not famed for generosity, except when something can be made out of it.“Oh, he's too handsome to beat down!”pleaded Monica.[pg 109]That settled it. To please her he would have given twice twenty pesetas for half the distance. The boy was engaged without further haggling; the animals were harnessed to the big Lecomte with rope which the youth“happened”to have; and with a thrilling cry of“A-r-r-r-i! O-lah!”he struck the two black backs with his goad.“I can't bear to see it!”Monica cried, covering her eyes, as the great heads were lowered to adjust the strain, and every muscle in the powerful, docile bodies writhed and bunched with the tremendous effort. Big as they were, it seemed impossible that two oxen could do for the car, with passengers and luggage, what its own engine refused to do; nevertheless the huge thing moved, at first with a shuddering jerk, then with a steady, if lumbering crawl.“O-lah!”shouted the boy;“thump”on the thick hide over the straining muscles fell the goad, and thus the car lurched through the deep snow, all of us following except Ropes, who having poured melted snow into the radiator, and let the cooling stream flow through the waterpipes, was bringing on the Gloria slowly, by her own power. She had now but two passengers, and not half as much luggage as the Lecomte, which perhaps explained her prowess; nevertheless I was proud.“Brava, Gloria!”I should have liked to shout.I could now have pushed ahead, and keeping pace with Carmona's car, as the oxen struggled nobly up the pass, have tried for a word or two with Monica. But perhaps Lady Vale-Avon expected such a move on the part of the troublesome young officer; and by way of precaution she had crowded near to the girl in the tonneau. A conversation worth having would have been hopeless thus spied upon, and I disappointed the chaperon by making no such attempt.To my surprise, Carmona walked with us, instead of forging on beside his own car. His friendliness puzzled me. Each look directed at my face was sharp as a gimlet, though his words were genial; but the final shock came when he announced that he was[pg 110]bound for the Escurial, and asked if we would like to join his party.“I know the palace like a book—better than I know most books,”said he;“and if you've never been, I can get you into places not usually shown.”The Cherub thanked Heaven that he had never been; and far would it be from him to go to-day or any other day. He had beheld the Escurial from outside, and had been depressed to the verge of tears. Often since he had consoled himself for various misfortunes by reflecting that, at worst, he was not enduring them at the Escurial. But he would sit in the automobile and compose himself to doze while his dear children and friends were martyred in the Monastery.“You're very good to personally conduct us,”Dick answered the Duke,“but we've no time for the Escurial.”“It will be worth while to make time,”I hurried to break in, though Dick glared a warning which said,“You silly ass, don't you see the man's laying a trap, and you're falling into it?”I was ready to risk that trap, and realizing that I meant to see the thing through, Dick urged no further objections.[pg 111]XVIA Secret of the King'sPilar said that the oxen were idiotic dears to break their hearts for nothing, not even a percentage on the twenty pesetas. But four-footed beasts are tragically conscientious, and these farmyard martyrs accomplished their task without a groan, while the Gloria crept up close behind on her own power.I thanked the patron saint of cow creation when the straining brutes got to the top. The summit of the pass was crowned by a lion on a granite pedestal; a lion with a cold air of pride in his mission of marking the limit between Old Castile and New. For me also he marked something for which I owed him gratitude; my deeper advance into the heart of my own land.Close to our resting-place at the top of the pass there was a rude hut, and one or two wagons which had strained up from the other side were halting their smoking teams. Here, seated in the car again, as we waited to see the oxen unyoked and the boy paid, a girl came out from the little house with a large volume, in which she asked us to sign our names. The Cherub scrawled something; and as Dick was scribbling, Carmona strolled across, to see whether or no I entrusted my name to the book. I had meant not to do so, but now I would have changed my mind had not Colonel O'Donnel stopped me.“I wrote your name, Cristóbal,”said he, in his ambrosial voice; and the situation was saved. Carmona made some commonplace remark to account for his approach, and walked away with a self-conscious[pg 112]back, as Pilar's glance and Monica's crossed the distance between the two automobiles and met mischievously.The grey car took the lead again, and at a turn of the road it seemed that the whole world lay at our feet; yet it was not even all of Old Castile, so vast a country is my Spain.Far as the eye could travel spread the fair land, green with the tender green of spring, yellow with patches of golden sand, darkly tufted with woods; struck with flying shafts of light, ringed in with ethereal blue.Nothing could steal from me this illuminated missal of memories, and were I to be banished to-morrow, I should have Spain to keep in my heart, I said, as we rushed down the steep, winding way that serpentined along the southern slope of the Guadarrama. A breakneck road it was, but nobly engineered, twisting back upon itself in many coils, letting us fly with the speed of a bird to lower levels; and it seemed that scarcely had we sunk over the brink of the mountain than we were at the turn on the right which would lead to the Escurial.Straight before us, rising out of the bare mountain side and seeming a part of it, towered and stretched a building vaster than any I had seen even in the limitless spaces of dreamland. Were it not for its cold regularity, I should have thought myself approaching another desert of giants who made toys of monoliths and obelisks; but these appalling domes and towers could be the work of man alone. There was no toying here; all was forbidding and gloomy; for this was the Escurial—immense, sinister, as if fashioned from the grim product of those iron mines which gave its name.I could imagine the fanatical satisfaction Philip's dry mind had found in planning this monument to represent the gridiron on which Saint Lawrence was martyred. He who was to stand in history as the great Inquisitor, must build his monastery and palace in honour of a martyr! But Philip was the last man to have a sense of humour; and it was like him to appease an injured saint by giving him a church a thousand times bigger[pg 113]than the one destroyed on Saint Lawrence's own day, in the battle of San Quentin.“Wouldn't the Escurial be hideous if it were anywhere else but just here?”asked Pilar.She was right; for on the Sierra it seemed an expression of the Sierra; and in spite of Philip rather than because of him, it was splendid in the melancholy strength which made it a brother of mountains.We lunched on extremely Spanish food at afondaopposite the Escurial; and when the time came for sightseeing—a time for us, but not for the public—the Duke began by marshalling us all, except the weary Duchess and the lazy Cherub, through the great door guarded by Saint Lawrence. Once within, we saw the treasures, as a bird in flight sees the beauties of a town over which he swoops; but we did see them, and once I had three words and one look from Monica, before it occurred to Lady Vale-Avon to link an arm in her daughter's, in a sudden overflow of maternal affection.Carmona had made a point of the“influence”which could open for us doors that, for others, would remain shut; and he did smuggle us into the Library of Manuscripts, the Queen's Oratory, and the Capilla Mayor to see the royal tombs. But after we had stopped longer than he wished in the church, and the Choir, where Philip learned that Lepanto had saved Europe from the Turks, and listened to the sad music of Mary Stuart's requiem, the Duke promised something still better, in the palace.“What you shall see there,”he said,“is a secret. It was a secret of King Philip's—so great a secret that even the writers of guide-books know nothing of it; while, if a tourist should have heard a rumour and asked a question, the attendants would say,‘There's no such thing in existence.’Only the Royal Family know, a few privileged people about the Court, and the guardians of the Escurial. As for me, I was told by someone here—someone whom I myself placed in the palace.”My curiosity was excited; and even Dick, who resented this[pg 114]expedition, looked interested as we arrived at the palace—the great gridiron's handle. At the entrance Carmona separated himself from the rest of the party, saying that he must have a few words in private with the attendant who would show the rooms of Philip the Second. He walked ahead, engaged the brown-liveried guide in low-voiced conversation, and seemed to ask a question with some eagerness.Observing the pantomime from a distance, I fancied that, for some reason, Carmona was to be denied the privilege of which he had boasted; but, apparently, he did not intend to accept defeat without a struggle. He and the guide moved on, then stopped again to argue—this time with their backs to us; but, from the action of Carmona's elbows, I judged that he put his hand into his pocket. Five or six minutes later he returned, to announce that after some difficulty he had succeeded in getting his own way. We might go, unattended, into the private apartments of Philip the Second; and while we were there, other visitors would be kept out.“If there are any, they'll be taken another round,”said Carmona,“and won't be ready to come into the King's rooms until we're ready to come out.”The guide led us down the narrow staircase to the outer door of Philip's suite, then slipped away, shutting the door behind him. Lady Vale-Avon and Monica (the mother still clasping her daughter's arm), Pilar, Dick, Carmona, and I were now alone between the gloomy walls behind which the bigot and despot had lived his miserable life and died his miserable death.There was a chill in the sombre place which froze the spirit; yet I, for one, did not feel sad. I was conscious only of an excited expectancy, as if I were waiting for something to happen.We let our imagination set the meagre form of Philip in his chair, or by the desk at which he used to write; examined the grim relics of his monk-like existence; and finally moved to the death-chamber, set like a stage-box at the theatre, beside the high altar of the chapel.So small was the room that it was filled by our little party of six;[pg 115]yet I felt there another presence which none of us could see—a grey ghost agonising for his sins, through a bleak eternity.Monica felt it too, for she shivered, and exclaimed,“Let us go. This room seems haunted with evil. I can't breathe in it.”“But now for the secret,”said Carmona.“Would you guess at any hidden opening in these walls?”We stared critically about, and I began to test the wainscot, but the Duke stopped me.“You'd never find the place,”he said;“and I promised the person who told me not to give away the secret; but that doesn't prevent me from showing you what's behind the door.”He moved close to the wall, stood for an instant, then stepped back, as we heard a slight clicking sound, like the snap of a spring on an old box-lid. At the same time a part of the wainscoting rolled away, leaving a narrow aperture.It was dark on the other side, but Carmona took a gold match-box from his pocket and struck a bunch of little waxfosforos.“Philip had this cell made for a place of penance and self-torture,”he said,“and it's just as it used to be during his lifetime, before he was too ill to go in any more. His twisted wire scourge is there, with his blood on it, his horsehair shirt, and a girdle bristling with small, sharp spikes. Will you have a look, Lady Vale-Avon? I can't go with you, for the cell isn't big enough for two, but I'll hold the matches at the door.”Lady Vale-Avon is of the type of woman who enjoys seeing such things as these; and though she would not have tortured herself had she lived in feudal days, I am sure she would have dined calmly over an underground dungeon where an enemy—an inconvenient wretch like me, for instance—suffered the pangs of starvation.She squeezed into the cell, descending a couple of steps, remained for two or three minutes, and came out, pronouncing it extremely interesting.“Now, Lady Monica, it's your turn,”said Carmona; but Monica drew back,“I hate seeing torture-things,”said she,[pg 116]“and blood, even wicked old blood like Philip's, which I used to think, when I read about him in history, I'd love to shed. No, I won't go in, thank you.”Pilar also refused, for if she went she would certainly have a nightmare and dream she was walled up; thus there remained only the three men to inspect the hidden horrors.Carmona held his match-box to me, saying that when we had seen the place he would look in to refresh his recollections. But Dick calmly helped himself to severalfosforosand took first turn, probably suspecting something in the way of anoubliette, especially prepared for me.He reappeared presently, however, his suspicions allayed.“Beastly hole,”he remarked;“almost bad enough for Philip, though he did grill some of my best ancestors.”I took a couple of matches, lighting them on the Duke's box; then, bending my head low, and pushing in one shoulder at a time, I squirmed through the aperture. In so doing, however, I contrived to trip over Carmona's foot, which must have been thrust forward, staggered against the opposite wall of the narrow cell, and lost both my lighted vestas. Carmona exclaimed, I stumbled, and almost simultaneously the door slid into place with a sharp click.There was not space to fall at length. I merely lost my balance, and saved my head from a bump by shielding it with a raised arm, I steadied myself in a second or two; but I was in black darkness. Outside I could hear a confused murmur of voices, and would have given something to know what Dick was saying at the moment.I was thinking that I should not like to be a prisoner in this hole (only large enough for the swing of Philip's scourge) for many hours on end, when there came an imperative tapping.“Holloa!”I answered, expecting to hear Dick speak in return; but it was Carmona's voice which replied. Evidently he was speaking with his mouth close to the secret door.“I'm very sorry for this accident,”said he distinctly.“When[pg 117]you stumbled, you knocked my arm, and made me touch the spring. Unfortunately the door closed with such a crash, that the spring seems out of order, and I can't move it. But if you'll be patient a few minutes, I'll look for an attendant who understands the thing, to bail you out of gaol.”If I had been Lieutenant Cristóbal O'Donnel I would have heard no more in the rhyming junction of those words“gaol”and“bail”than met the ear, but being the man I was—the man he suspected me to be—I did hear more; and I believed that he wished me to catch a double meaning.“Does he mean to hand me over to the police now, on suspicion?”I wondered in my black cell—“before Monica's eyes?”But aloud I said,“Thanks; don't be too long, or I shall be tempted to smash the door.”“You'll find that impossible,”answered Carmona.“Don't worry if I seem to be gone an age. There's only one man on duty to-day who knows the secret of this room; I asked for him when we came, but his comrade said he was away on leave till four o'clock. It must be that now, and I'll have him here as soon as possible. He will be the more pleased to set you free, as he's an old friend of yours. You remember little Rafael Calmenare?”I was silent, seeing, as if by the glare of lightning, the whole design of the trap, and seeming to see also the triumph which must be in Carmona's eyes. But the pause had not lengthened to a second, when I heard Pilar's voice, speaking also close to the door.“Of course you remember, Cristóbal. Rafael Calmenare of the Duke'sganaderia. But it's a long time since he went away.”“After he was gored by Nero and lost his health, through the influence of a friend at Court I got him a place here,”I heard Carmona say. Then raising his voice for my ears, he went on,“Poor Rafael will be pleased to see you again. You must have played with him when a boy. I'm off to find him now.”Silence followed these last words. I could picture the consternation of Dick and Pilar. Neither could do anything to help[pg 118]me, nor could I help myself. I could but wait in this suffocating black hole for the moment when a stranger should give me light, and exclaim,“This is not Don Cristóbal!”Almost I admired Carmona for his quick wit. After a few moments of rage, at sight of the suspected man of Burgos Cathedral on his track in the red motor-car, the thought of the Escurial and his old servant must have sprung into his mind.Had Calmenare been available at first, Carmona would have been spared the trouble of shutting me up in Philip the Bigot's torture-chamber; but hard pressed for an excuse to keep us at the Escurial till his man came back, he had put me where I could be kept while needed. And now that he was gone in search of Rafael, we three loyal comrades could not discuss the situation, because of Lady Vale-Avon's presence.A brilliant stroke of Carmona's to have me betrayed by another than himself, so that Monica might not bear him a grudge! Who was this person masquerading as an officer of the Spanish army? would be the first question of the police. And the answer need not be long in coming. The Duke had reason to congratulate himself; I had been a fool to drop like a fly into his net, and now that I was in, I saw no way out.“Oh, how I wish we could open the secret door!”I heard Monica exclaim.“I can't even see exactly where it is now,”Pilar said.“Cristóbal?”“Yes,”I answered.“Poor little Rafael; a good fellow, wasn't he?”“Very good,”I replied. To what end was she working? I wondered. But I was not to be made wiser. Before she had time to finish the hint I heard Carmona speaking.“I've sent for Calmenare, who has returned, and will be here in a few minutes,”he called to me. It was like him to hurry back, so that by no possible means could the three suspected ones reach any understanding.The moments dragged on, and I could have lashed myself[pg 119]with Philip's scourge in fury at the rashness which might involve the whole O'Donnel family in my disaster. Never had I been able to think less clearly; but perhaps it was the stifling atmosphere of the cell which made me feel that fingers in a mailed glove were clenched round my temples.Outside, voices buzzed; but those who spoke must have stood at a distance, for I could catch no words. Then, at last, there was a new voice in the room. Calmenare had come.“How do you do, Don Rafael?”Pilar exclaimed, as politely as if she had addressed an equal.“I'm glad to see you again. I've been waiting for you impatiently. Only think,my dear brother Cristóbal, whom you know so well, is in that dreadful place and can't get out, because the Señor Duque shut him in—by mistake—and broke the spring.”“I do not find that it is broken, señorita,”answered the new voice.“I couldn't make it work,”Carmona said hastily.Click! went the spring under skilled fingers. The door sliding back gave me a rush of light and air which set me blinking for a second or two; and there I stood at the stranger's mercy.What I saw, when my suddenly contracted pupils expanded, was a little man in the palace livery; a pale little man with insignificant features, and large, steady eyes. There was absolutely no expression in his face as for one brief instant our glances met. Then—“God be with you, Don Cristóbal,”said he.“I am glad to have been even of this slight service. I hope, señorito, you have not suffered from lack of air?”“Very little,”said I. I held out my hand. He took it respectfully.“Is it long since you saw each other?”asked Carmona, sallow and red by turns.“About two years only, Señor Duque,”replied his ex-servant, expressionless as before, and quietly respectful to all.“I could not forget the date, for the Señor Colonel and the señorita, as well as the señorito himself, were always very good to me.”[pg 120]The Duke was silenced. The test invented by himself had failed. Calmenare accepted me as Cristóbal O'Donnel; he was obliged to accept me too—at least for the present.“Shall we get out of this place?”he said to Lady Vale-Avon.She swept her daughter with her; but Monica had a backward look for me, sparkling now with malice for Carmona, radiant with relief for Casa Triana.We said good-bye to Calmenare in the Duke's presence; and I would have pressed a gold piece into his hand for“opening my prison door,”but he would not have it. Afterwards, while we followed the grey car on the downhill road to Madrid, Pilar told the whole story with dramatic effect to the Cherub.“My one hope was in Rafael,”she said.“I was good to him, you remember, when he was ill. And he and I had a great sympathy over Corcito, the dear grey bull. I prayed he'd never forgiven the Duke for that crime, and that he'd still be grateful to me. Well, I looked Rafael straight in the eyes when I said,‘My brother Cristóbal is in that place, shut up by the Duke, who has broken the spring.’With all my soul I willed him to understand, and he did.‘If the señorita chooses to have a strange gentleman for her brother, he is her brother for me,’is what he said to himself; no more! But what if hehadn't?”“That's where I should have come in,”remarked Dick.“What would you have done?”asked Pilar, breathless.“I don't know,”said Dick.“I only know I should havedoneit; and that if I had, maybe Carmona wouldn't have been feeling as well as he feels now.”

[pg 101]XVHow the Duke Changed“Lecomte getting ready, sir,”were Ropes' first words to me next morning;“and I've brought our car to the door.”He had other news, too. An automobile had come in last night from Madrid, a sixty horse-power Merlin, and the chauffeur had reported snow half a metre deep on the mountains. The Merlin had stuck, he said, and had to be pulled out with oxen. Supposing the Duke intended going to Madrid instead of turning off by way of Salamanca, he—and incidentally we—seemed likely to come in for an adventure.We had all taken coffee and rolls in our rooms, as nobody dreams of going downstairs for breakfast in a Spanish hotel; and soon after eight we were jolting out of“Val”through streets as execrably paved as those by which we entered. We had kept Ropes waiting after his announcement only long enough to strap our luggage on the roof; and as the other car had luggage and passengers also to pick up, we were just in time to see it leaving the house of the Duke's relations with everyone on board.As the Lecomte took the road to the south on leaving town, it gave us an assurance that it would not make for Salamanca; but there was still doubt as to its movements. It could go to Madrid direct over the snow heights of the Sierra Guadarrama, or it could pay a visit to the Escurial. It might even halt there for the night; and as there were so many alternatives, we were anxious to keep our leader continually in view.The wind was bitter cold, and Pilar shivered in her cloak,[pg 102]which was not made for motoring. When Dick saw this, before I could speak he had his own fur-lined coat off, insisting that she should put it on.“I can take Casa Triana's,”said he,“since he's still posing as a soldier of Spain.”And a glance warned me not to blunder by asking why, in the name of common sense, she shouldn't have mine which I wasn't using, instead of his, which was on his back. Hewantedher to wear his coat, and hang common sense!After an instant's stupid bewilderment I saw this, and could hardly help chuckling. How many days had he known her? Two and a bit. At Biarritz he had given me sound advice on my affairs; couldn't understand this fall-in-love-at-sight business; thought a girl wasn't worth a red cent till she was twenty-two couldn't see himself being sentimental in any circumstances; was going to wait to make his choice till he went back to America; believed a man owed it to his own country to put his country-women first; and anyhow couldn't stand a girl who wasn't able to converse rationally. Yet Pilar, if she were to talk with him in his own tongue, must perforce limit her scintillations to“Varry nice, lo-vely, all raight”; while, if he wrestled with hers, he could scarcely go beyond phrase-book limits.The language of the eyes remained; but that has no place in the realm of common sense. My overcoat was singularly unbecoming to Dick; but he beamed with happiness in it, as he regarded Pilar cosily folded in his; and looking on the picture, certain things occurred to me which I might say to Dick when I got him alone. But after all, I thought I would keep them to laugh over myself.On this morning of biting wind and brilliant sun, there was still more dazzle of snow to illumine the mountain tops; and though the road was dull, the beauty of the atmospheric effects was worth coming to Spain to see. The road we travelled and the near meadows seemed, as we went speeding on, the only solid ground in sight; as if we had landed on an island floating at the rate of thirty miles an hour, through a vast[pg 103]sea of translucent tints that changed with the light, as an opal changes.Forests of strangely bunchy“umbrella”pines were blots of dark green ink splashed against the sky; and scarcely five minutes passed but we saw the finger of an old watch-tower pointing cloudward from a hill. Sometimes our road, dividing endless cornfields, stretched before us long and straight for miles ahead, over switchback after switchback, as if the hills chased each other but never succeeded in catching up. Then, when we had grown used to such an outlook, the road would twist so suddenly that it seemed to spring up in our faces. It would turn upon itself and writhe like a wounded cobra, before it was able to crawl on again.Ours was a silent, uninhabited world, without a house visible anywhere, save here and there some stony ruin—a landmark of the Peninsular War. One could but think that gnomes stole out at night from holes under the hills, to till the land for absentee owners; for the illimitable fields were cultivated down to the last inch. We shared a queer impression that we had strayed into a country which no human eye had seen for centuries; but when we crossed the broad Douro running to the Bay of Biscay and Oporto, and steered the car jerkily through the ragged village of Mojales, at an abrupt turn of the road we were in a different world—a desert of stones.Prehistoric giants had played with dolmens and cyclopean boulders, and left their toys scattered in confusion. Stonehenge might have been copied from one of their strange structures; and they had given later races a rough idea of forts and cities. Giant children had fashioned stone elephants, heads of warriors, dogs sitting on their haunches, granite drinking cups, and misshapen baskets, all of astonishing size. Or was it water, slow as the mills of the gods, and as sure, which had wrought all these fantastic designs, and piled these tremendous blocks one upon another?A high stone bridge spanned a rocky ravine carved by that slow power in a few leisure millions of years; and there, sheltered[pg 104]from the wind, would have been an ideal place for motorists to picnic. But the Duke did not picnic, therefore we must not. Following hard upon his heels we went on, up and up into the mountain world, still in the playground of vanished giants, winding along a road as wild as the way to Montenegro. Rising at regular intervals before us, on either side stood tall stone columns, sentinel-like, placed in pairs to guide wayfarers through white drifts in time of winter storms. The country was wooded, and began to have the air of a private park, though the heights were close above us now, and our road ascended steadily. From the scenery of Montenegro we came plump into the Black Forest; and Baden-Baden might have lain in the valley below these pointed mountains clothed in mourning pines.Squish! The brown slush of melted snow gushed out in fountains as our fat tyres ploughed through, and on either hand it lay unbroken in virgin purity beneath the pines. Half a mile higher, and even the traffic of heavy ox-carts and the sun's fierce fire had had no power to break the marble pavement. It was shattered and chipped, and carved into deep ruts by wooden wheels; but there were no muddy veins of brown. Ten minutes more, and our engine began to labour. Then, before there was time to count the moments, we were in snow to our axles.The motor's heart beat hard, but with a sturdy, dependable noise which comforted Pilar, who was half laughing, half frightened, at this her first adventure. At any instant now we might come upon the Lecomte held in the snow-trap which threatened to catch us.Ropes kept the car in the wide ruts made by ox-carts, but even with his good driving we swayed to right and left, leaving the rough track and ploughing into drifts dangerously near the precipice edge, or skidding as if we skated on polished ice, failing to grip the frozen surface.Now was the time to relieve the willing engine. Dick and I sprang out, and Colonel O'Donnel followed, though we would have persuaded him to keep his place. Only Pilar was left in the[pg 105]car, with Ropes driving, while we three men, knee deep in snow, set our shoulders to help the Gloria as she made the supreme effort. Pushing, and slipping at every step, our blood (which had run sluggishly with cold) racing through our veins, we were putting on a great spurt of united force, when gallantly rounding a bend we all but rammed the back of Carmona's car.There it was, stuck in a drift like a frozen wave; and there was Carmona himself up to his knees in diamond dust, gloomily superintending his chauffeur who packed snow into the radiator to cool the overheated motor.All the extra power of the Lecomte gave no advantage over the Gloria here. Fate had set the stage for us, and we must obey the cue. No ingenuity of Pilar's could hide us in the wings any longer, and we must play our parts as Destiny prompted.Only one thing was clear. Carmona could have had no idea until now that the O'Donnels (with that young soldier so like the Forbidden Man) were travelling in the red car whence he had already plucked a suspected passenger. The coincidence would seem strange to him; and if he were sure enough of his ground to risk another error, he would probably denounce me to the police in the next big town. Disguising my outcast self as an officer in a Spanish regiment would not be a point in my favour; but—he could do nothing now. Monica was here, and the moment was mine.There was a savage joy in the situation, born of exaltation, of the high altitude, and of uncertainty as to what might come next.“Shall you keep out of the way?”asked Dick; for we were still screened from Carmona's sight by our own car, which Ropes had stopped with a grinding of the brake; and Pilar's face was veiled.“Not I. I'm going to have some fun,”I answered.“It must come sooner or later, better sooner, or what's the good of playing Cristobal O'Donnel?”With that, I appeared from behind the car, and the others were following, while Pilar leaned out in anxious expectancy.[pg 106]“How do you do?”said I, in Andaluz as lazy as the other Cristóbal could have used. I took off my cap to the ladies, and so did Dick and the Cherub, exposing heated foreheads, damp from honest toil.“Sorry to find you in such a difficulty. But we'll soon get you out of that, won't we, Señor Waring? Here are three of us with stout shoulders and willing hearts.”“Four, counting my chauffeur,”said Dick in English, playing up to my lead, since there was no stopping me now.“We're delighted to do anything we can.”Carmona glared as an animal glares when it is at bay; only, an animal can attack his enemies, and he could not attack us; for he was not sure whether we were enemies or no, and whether he would not be making a fool of himself if he let us know what passed in his brain.It was evident that he thought very hard for a moment, and was of two minds as to what he had better do. But suddenly the baited look vanished from his face, as a shadow is chased away by the sun, and I guessed that a course of action had occurred to him with which he was well satisfied. This seemed ominous for me, and I would have given something to read his thoughts.He answered our“How do you do?”with great cordiality—for him; said that he had been taken by surprise, at first, as he had no idea the motoring tour of which Señorita Pilar spoke would begin so soon, or bring us upon his track. It was a good thing for him, however, that we were here, and not only was he pleased to see us for our own sakes, but would be glad to accept our kind offer.Meanwhile Pilar had pushed up her veil, and she and Monica were exchanging greetings. As for Lady Vale-Avon, her veil was up, too, and her lorgnettes at her eyes. I did not doubt that she and the Duke had compared impressions concerning our family party, after the episode at Burgos, impressions startlingly confirmed now, and Carmona's cordiality in such circumstances must have puzzled her. As to the Duchess, her large face was[pg 107]hidden behind a thick screen of lead-coloured tissue, and I could judge nothing of her feelings.When Monica heard the proposal for propelling the grey car through the drifts, she had the door open in an instant, and would have been out in the deep snow, if we had not stopped her.“You must all stay where you are,”said Carmona hurriedly, fearing, perhaps, that some opportunity for a word would be snatched in spite of him, if I were really Casa Triana.“The weight of three women makes no difference whatever; isn't that true, señor?”and he turned to Dick, who, according to our story, was the owner of the red automobile as well as the host of the party.Of course Dick agreed, and so did we all, that the ladies were not on any account to get out. The Duke's chauffeur jumped into his place again, and, with a twist of the starting handle, the tired motor quivered to its iron entrails. There was a sudden awaking of carburetor, pistons, sparking-plugs, valves, trembler, each part which had been resting after the long pull, striving to obey its master. With a sighing scream of the gearing, the car stumbled forward and up, our united force pressed into service. Staggering, plunging, pushing, we gave all the help we could, and for a few minutes it seemed that with our aid the motor would claw its way to the highest point.Our hearts drummed in our breasts, and sent the hot blood jumping to our heads as if in sympathy with the mighty struggle of the engine. But the Lecomte's forty horses, and the strength and goodwill of five men—counting Carmona, who did as little work as he could—were not enough. The wheels sank to the axles, whizzing round in the snow without propelling the car; with the motor unable to do its part, we men alone could not do all. The automobile would not budge for all our pushing; and, seeing that labour was lost, we stopped to breathe and raise our eyebrows questioningly at one another. Carmona, alarmed at finding that his chestnuts could not be pulled out of the fire by[pg 108]any cat's-paws at his service, wondered audibly what he ought to do.“Someone who came to Valladolid last night was hauled through the drifts by oxen,”said I. And even as I spoke, like a ram caught in the bushes ready for the sacrifice, I spied in the white distance the black silhouette of an enormous ox.He was not alone, for a more penetrating glance showed that he had a yoke-fellow as big and black as himself; and guided by a red-sashed boy in scarf and shawl they advanced towards us slowly but so surely that I suspected something more than a coincidence. The great lumbering animals were like blobs of ink against the snow, and the lithe figure of the boy made a fine spot of colour as he walked before his beasts, his stick to their noses as if it were a magnet which they, anchored head to head with a beam of wood, were compelled to follow.It flashed into my mind that this youth and his oxen were not wandering through mountain snow-drifts for nothing. The wolves which howl in these same wild fastnesses on a winter night scent prey; and so I thought did the boy, with the trifling substitute of petrol for blood. This youth had made a good haul (in every sense of the word) by accident yesterday; was out searching for other hauls to-day, and would be while the snow lasted.We hailed him. He feigned surprise, and hesitated, as if to enhance his value. Then, casting down long lashes as he listened to our proposal, pretended to consider pros and cons. It would be a terrible strain for his animals to drag such a great weight, but—oh, certainly they would beableto do it. They were docile and strong. Every day nearly they drew heavy loads of cut logs over the mountains. For twenty pesetas he would risk injuring his oxen, but not arealless; and they would drag the grey car to the top of the pass, that he could promise.“What extortion!”protested Carmona, who is not famed for generosity, except when something can be made out of it.“Oh, he's too handsome to beat down!”pleaded Monica.[pg 109]That settled it. To please her he would have given twice twenty pesetas for half the distance. The boy was engaged without further haggling; the animals were harnessed to the big Lecomte with rope which the youth“happened”to have; and with a thrilling cry of“A-r-r-r-i! O-lah!”he struck the two black backs with his goad.“I can't bear to see it!”Monica cried, covering her eyes, as the great heads were lowered to adjust the strain, and every muscle in the powerful, docile bodies writhed and bunched with the tremendous effort. Big as they were, it seemed impossible that two oxen could do for the car, with passengers and luggage, what its own engine refused to do; nevertheless the huge thing moved, at first with a shuddering jerk, then with a steady, if lumbering crawl.“O-lah!”shouted the boy;“thump”on the thick hide over the straining muscles fell the goad, and thus the car lurched through the deep snow, all of us following except Ropes, who having poured melted snow into the radiator, and let the cooling stream flow through the waterpipes, was bringing on the Gloria slowly, by her own power. She had now but two passengers, and not half as much luggage as the Lecomte, which perhaps explained her prowess; nevertheless I was proud.“Brava, Gloria!”I should have liked to shout.I could now have pushed ahead, and keeping pace with Carmona's car, as the oxen struggled nobly up the pass, have tried for a word or two with Monica. But perhaps Lady Vale-Avon expected such a move on the part of the troublesome young officer; and by way of precaution she had crowded near to the girl in the tonneau. A conversation worth having would have been hopeless thus spied upon, and I disappointed the chaperon by making no such attempt.To my surprise, Carmona walked with us, instead of forging on beside his own car. His friendliness puzzled me. Each look directed at my face was sharp as a gimlet, though his words were genial; but the final shock came when he announced that he was[pg 110]bound for the Escurial, and asked if we would like to join his party.“I know the palace like a book—better than I know most books,”said he;“and if you've never been, I can get you into places not usually shown.”The Cherub thanked Heaven that he had never been; and far would it be from him to go to-day or any other day. He had beheld the Escurial from outside, and had been depressed to the verge of tears. Often since he had consoled himself for various misfortunes by reflecting that, at worst, he was not enduring them at the Escurial. But he would sit in the automobile and compose himself to doze while his dear children and friends were martyred in the Monastery.“You're very good to personally conduct us,”Dick answered the Duke,“but we've no time for the Escurial.”“It will be worth while to make time,”I hurried to break in, though Dick glared a warning which said,“You silly ass, don't you see the man's laying a trap, and you're falling into it?”I was ready to risk that trap, and realizing that I meant to see the thing through, Dick urged no further objections.

“Lecomte getting ready, sir,”were Ropes' first words to me next morning;“and I've brought our car to the door.”

He had other news, too. An automobile had come in last night from Madrid, a sixty horse-power Merlin, and the chauffeur had reported snow half a metre deep on the mountains. The Merlin had stuck, he said, and had to be pulled out with oxen. Supposing the Duke intended going to Madrid instead of turning off by way of Salamanca, he—and incidentally we—seemed likely to come in for an adventure.

We had all taken coffee and rolls in our rooms, as nobody dreams of going downstairs for breakfast in a Spanish hotel; and soon after eight we were jolting out of“Val”through streets as execrably paved as those by which we entered. We had kept Ropes waiting after his announcement only long enough to strap our luggage on the roof; and as the other car had luggage and passengers also to pick up, we were just in time to see it leaving the house of the Duke's relations with everyone on board.

As the Lecomte took the road to the south on leaving town, it gave us an assurance that it would not make for Salamanca; but there was still doubt as to its movements. It could go to Madrid direct over the snow heights of the Sierra Guadarrama, or it could pay a visit to the Escurial. It might even halt there for the night; and as there were so many alternatives, we were anxious to keep our leader continually in view.

The wind was bitter cold, and Pilar shivered in her cloak,[pg 102]which was not made for motoring. When Dick saw this, before I could speak he had his own fur-lined coat off, insisting that she should put it on.“I can take Casa Triana's,”said he,“since he's still posing as a soldier of Spain.”And a glance warned me not to blunder by asking why, in the name of common sense, she shouldn't have mine which I wasn't using, instead of his, which was on his back. Hewantedher to wear his coat, and hang common sense!

After an instant's stupid bewilderment I saw this, and could hardly help chuckling. How many days had he known her? Two and a bit. At Biarritz he had given me sound advice on my affairs; couldn't understand this fall-in-love-at-sight business; thought a girl wasn't worth a red cent till she was twenty-two couldn't see himself being sentimental in any circumstances; was going to wait to make his choice till he went back to America; believed a man owed it to his own country to put his country-women first; and anyhow couldn't stand a girl who wasn't able to converse rationally. Yet Pilar, if she were to talk with him in his own tongue, must perforce limit her scintillations to“Varry nice, lo-vely, all raight”; while, if he wrestled with hers, he could scarcely go beyond phrase-book limits.

The language of the eyes remained; but that has no place in the realm of common sense. My overcoat was singularly unbecoming to Dick; but he beamed with happiness in it, as he regarded Pilar cosily folded in his; and looking on the picture, certain things occurred to me which I might say to Dick when I got him alone. But after all, I thought I would keep them to laugh over myself.

On this morning of biting wind and brilliant sun, there was still more dazzle of snow to illumine the mountain tops; and though the road was dull, the beauty of the atmospheric effects was worth coming to Spain to see. The road we travelled and the near meadows seemed, as we went speeding on, the only solid ground in sight; as if we had landed on an island floating at the rate of thirty miles an hour, through a vast[pg 103]sea of translucent tints that changed with the light, as an opal changes.

Forests of strangely bunchy“umbrella”pines were blots of dark green ink splashed against the sky; and scarcely five minutes passed but we saw the finger of an old watch-tower pointing cloudward from a hill. Sometimes our road, dividing endless cornfields, stretched before us long and straight for miles ahead, over switchback after switchback, as if the hills chased each other but never succeeded in catching up. Then, when we had grown used to such an outlook, the road would twist so suddenly that it seemed to spring up in our faces. It would turn upon itself and writhe like a wounded cobra, before it was able to crawl on again.

Ours was a silent, uninhabited world, without a house visible anywhere, save here and there some stony ruin—a landmark of the Peninsular War. One could but think that gnomes stole out at night from holes under the hills, to till the land for absentee owners; for the illimitable fields were cultivated down to the last inch. We shared a queer impression that we had strayed into a country which no human eye had seen for centuries; but when we crossed the broad Douro running to the Bay of Biscay and Oporto, and steered the car jerkily through the ragged village of Mojales, at an abrupt turn of the road we were in a different world—a desert of stones.

Prehistoric giants had played with dolmens and cyclopean boulders, and left their toys scattered in confusion. Stonehenge might have been copied from one of their strange structures; and they had given later races a rough idea of forts and cities. Giant children had fashioned stone elephants, heads of warriors, dogs sitting on their haunches, granite drinking cups, and misshapen baskets, all of astonishing size. Or was it water, slow as the mills of the gods, and as sure, which had wrought all these fantastic designs, and piled these tremendous blocks one upon another?

A high stone bridge spanned a rocky ravine carved by that slow power in a few leisure millions of years; and there, sheltered[pg 104]from the wind, would have been an ideal place for motorists to picnic. But the Duke did not picnic, therefore we must not. Following hard upon his heels we went on, up and up into the mountain world, still in the playground of vanished giants, winding along a road as wild as the way to Montenegro. Rising at regular intervals before us, on either side stood tall stone columns, sentinel-like, placed in pairs to guide wayfarers through white drifts in time of winter storms. The country was wooded, and began to have the air of a private park, though the heights were close above us now, and our road ascended steadily. From the scenery of Montenegro we came plump into the Black Forest; and Baden-Baden might have lain in the valley below these pointed mountains clothed in mourning pines.

Squish! The brown slush of melted snow gushed out in fountains as our fat tyres ploughed through, and on either hand it lay unbroken in virgin purity beneath the pines. Half a mile higher, and even the traffic of heavy ox-carts and the sun's fierce fire had had no power to break the marble pavement. It was shattered and chipped, and carved into deep ruts by wooden wheels; but there were no muddy veins of brown. Ten minutes more, and our engine began to labour. Then, before there was time to count the moments, we were in snow to our axles.

The motor's heart beat hard, but with a sturdy, dependable noise which comforted Pilar, who was half laughing, half frightened, at this her first adventure. At any instant now we might come upon the Lecomte held in the snow-trap which threatened to catch us.

Ropes kept the car in the wide ruts made by ox-carts, but even with his good driving we swayed to right and left, leaving the rough track and ploughing into drifts dangerously near the precipice edge, or skidding as if we skated on polished ice, failing to grip the frozen surface.

Now was the time to relieve the willing engine. Dick and I sprang out, and Colonel O'Donnel followed, though we would have persuaded him to keep his place. Only Pilar was left in the[pg 105]car, with Ropes driving, while we three men, knee deep in snow, set our shoulders to help the Gloria as she made the supreme effort. Pushing, and slipping at every step, our blood (which had run sluggishly with cold) racing through our veins, we were putting on a great spurt of united force, when gallantly rounding a bend we all but rammed the back of Carmona's car.

There it was, stuck in a drift like a frozen wave; and there was Carmona himself up to his knees in diamond dust, gloomily superintending his chauffeur who packed snow into the radiator to cool the overheated motor.

All the extra power of the Lecomte gave no advantage over the Gloria here. Fate had set the stage for us, and we must obey the cue. No ingenuity of Pilar's could hide us in the wings any longer, and we must play our parts as Destiny prompted.

Only one thing was clear. Carmona could have had no idea until now that the O'Donnels (with that young soldier so like the Forbidden Man) were travelling in the red car whence he had already plucked a suspected passenger. The coincidence would seem strange to him; and if he were sure enough of his ground to risk another error, he would probably denounce me to the police in the next big town. Disguising my outcast self as an officer in a Spanish regiment would not be a point in my favour; but—he could do nothing now. Monica was here, and the moment was mine.

There was a savage joy in the situation, born of exaltation, of the high altitude, and of uncertainty as to what might come next.

“Shall you keep out of the way?”asked Dick; for we were still screened from Carmona's sight by our own car, which Ropes had stopped with a grinding of the brake; and Pilar's face was veiled.

“Not I. I'm going to have some fun,”I answered.“It must come sooner or later, better sooner, or what's the good of playing Cristobal O'Donnel?”

With that, I appeared from behind the car, and the others were following, while Pilar leaned out in anxious expectancy.

[pg 106]“How do you do?”said I, in Andaluz as lazy as the other Cristóbal could have used. I took off my cap to the ladies, and so did Dick and the Cherub, exposing heated foreheads, damp from honest toil.“Sorry to find you in such a difficulty. But we'll soon get you out of that, won't we, Señor Waring? Here are three of us with stout shoulders and willing hearts.”

“Four, counting my chauffeur,”said Dick in English, playing up to my lead, since there was no stopping me now.“We're delighted to do anything we can.”

Carmona glared as an animal glares when it is at bay; only, an animal can attack his enemies, and he could not attack us; for he was not sure whether we were enemies or no, and whether he would not be making a fool of himself if he let us know what passed in his brain.

It was evident that he thought very hard for a moment, and was of two minds as to what he had better do. But suddenly the baited look vanished from his face, as a shadow is chased away by the sun, and I guessed that a course of action had occurred to him with which he was well satisfied. This seemed ominous for me, and I would have given something to read his thoughts.

He answered our“How do you do?”with great cordiality—for him; said that he had been taken by surprise, at first, as he had no idea the motoring tour of which Señorita Pilar spoke would begin so soon, or bring us upon his track. It was a good thing for him, however, that we were here, and not only was he pleased to see us for our own sakes, but would be glad to accept our kind offer.

Meanwhile Pilar had pushed up her veil, and she and Monica were exchanging greetings. As for Lady Vale-Avon, her veil was up, too, and her lorgnettes at her eyes. I did not doubt that she and the Duke had compared impressions concerning our family party, after the episode at Burgos, impressions startlingly confirmed now, and Carmona's cordiality in such circumstances must have puzzled her. As to the Duchess, her large face was[pg 107]hidden behind a thick screen of lead-coloured tissue, and I could judge nothing of her feelings.

When Monica heard the proposal for propelling the grey car through the drifts, she had the door open in an instant, and would have been out in the deep snow, if we had not stopped her.

“You must all stay where you are,”said Carmona hurriedly, fearing, perhaps, that some opportunity for a word would be snatched in spite of him, if I were really Casa Triana.“The weight of three women makes no difference whatever; isn't that true, señor?”and he turned to Dick, who, according to our story, was the owner of the red automobile as well as the host of the party.

Of course Dick agreed, and so did we all, that the ladies were not on any account to get out. The Duke's chauffeur jumped into his place again, and, with a twist of the starting handle, the tired motor quivered to its iron entrails. There was a sudden awaking of carburetor, pistons, sparking-plugs, valves, trembler, each part which had been resting after the long pull, striving to obey its master. With a sighing scream of the gearing, the car stumbled forward and up, our united force pressed into service. Staggering, plunging, pushing, we gave all the help we could, and for a few minutes it seemed that with our aid the motor would claw its way to the highest point.

Our hearts drummed in our breasts, and sent the hot blood jumping to our heads as if in sympathy with the mighty struggle of the engine. But the Lecomte's forty horses, and the strength and goodwill of five men—counting Carmona, who did as little work as he could—were not enough. The wheels sank to the axles, whizzing round in the snow without propelling the car; with the motor unable to do its part, we men alone could not do all. The automobile would not budge for all our pushing; and, seeing that labour was lost, we stopped to breathe and raise our eyebrows questioningly at one another. Carmona, alarmed at finding that his chestnuts could not be pulled out of the fire by[pg 108]any cat's-paws at his service, wondered audibly what he ought to do.

“Someone who came to Valladolid last night was hauled through the drifts by oxen,”said I. And even as I spoke, like a ram caught in the bushes ready for the sacrifice, I spied in the white distance the black silhouette of an enormous ox.

He was not alone, for a more penetrating glance showed that he had a yoke-fellow as big and black as himself; and guided by a red-sashed boy in scarf and shawl they advanced towards us slowly but so surely that I suspected something more than a coincidence. The great lumbering animals were like blobs of ink against the snow, and the lithe figure of the boy made a fine spot of colour as he walked before his beasts, his stick to their noses as if it were a magnet which they, anchored head to head with a beam of wood, were compelled to follow.

It flashed into my mind that this youth and his oxen were not wandering through mountain snow-drifts for nothing. The wolves which howl in these same wild fastnesses on a winter night scent prey; and so I thought did the boy, with the trifling substitute of petrol for blood. This youth had made a good haul (in every sense of the word) by accident yesterday; was out searching for other hauls to-day, and would be while the snow lasted.

We hailed him. He feigned surprise, and hesitated, as if to enhance his value. Then, casting down long lashes as he listened to our proposal, pretended to consider pros and cons. It would be a terrible strain for his animals to drag such a great weight, but—oh, certainly they would beableto do it. They were docile and strong. Every day nearly they drew heavy loads of cut logs over the mountains. For twenty pesetas he would risk injuring his oxen, but not arealless; and they would drag the grey car to the top of the pass, that he could promise.

“What extortion!”protested Carmona, who is not famed for generosity, except when something can be made out of it.

“Oh, he's too handsome to beat down!”pleaded Monica.

[pg 109]That settled it. To please her he would have given twice twenty pesetas for half the distance. The boy was engaged without further haggling; the animals were harnessed to the big Lecomte with rope which the youth“happened”to have; and with a thrilling cry of“A-r-r-r-i! O-lah!”he struck the two black backs with his goad.

“I can't bear to see it!”Monica cried, covering her eyes, as the great heads were lowered to adjust the strain, and every muscle in the powerful, docile bodies writhed and bunched with the tremendous effort. Big as they were, it seemed impossible that two oxen could do for the car, with passengers and luggage, what its own engine refused to do; nevertheless the huge thing moved, at first with a shuddering jerk, then with a steady, if lumbering crawl.

“O-lah!”shouted the boy;“thump”on the thick hide over the straining muscles fell the goad, and thus the car lurched through the deep snow, all of us following except Ropes, who having poured melted snow into the radiator, and let the cooling stream flow through the waterpipes, was bringing on the Gloria slowly, by her own power. She had now but two passengers, and not half as much luggage as the Lecomte, which perhaps explained her prowess; nevertheless I was proud.“Brava, Gloria!”I should have liked to shout.

I could now have pushed ahead, and keeping pace with Carmona's car, as the oxen struggled nobly up the pass, have tried for a word or two with Monica. But perhaps Lady Vale-Avon expected such a move on the part of the troublesome young officer; and by way of precaution she had crowded near to the girl in the tonneau. A conversation worth having would have been hopeless thus spied upon, and I disappointed the chaperon by making no such attempt.

To my surprise, Carmona walked with us, instead of forging on beside his own car. His friendliness puzzled me. Each look directed at my face was sharp as a gimlet, though his words were genial; but the final shock came when he announced that he was[pg 110]bound for the Escurial, and asked if we would like to join his party.

“I know the palace like a book—better than I know most books,”said he;“and if you've never been, I can get you into places not usually shown.”

The Cherub thanked Heaven that he had never been; and far would it be from him to go to-day or any other day. He had beheld the Escurial from outside, and had been depressed to the verge of tears. Often since he had consoled himself for various misfortunes by reflecting that, at worst, he was not enduring them at the Escurial. But he would sit in the automobile and compose himself to doze while his dear children and friends were martyred in the Monastery.

“You're very good to personally conduct us,”Dick answered the Duke,“but we've no time for the Escurial.”

“It will be worth while to make time,”I hurried to break in, though Dick glared a warning which said,“You silly ass, don't you see the man's laying a trap, and you're falling into it?”

I was ready to risk that trap, and realizing that I meant to see the thing through, Dick urged no further objections.

[pg 111]XVIA Secret of the King'sPilar said that the oxen were idiotic dears to break their hearts for nothing, not even a percentage on the twenty pesetas. But four-footed beasts are tragically conscientious, and these farmyard martyrs accomplished their task without a groan, while the Gloria crept up close behind on her own power.I thanked the patron saint of cow creation when the straining brutes got to the top. The summit of the pass was crowned by a lion on a granite pedestal; a lion with a cold air of pride in his mission of marking the limit between Old Castile and New. For me also he marked something for which I owed him gratitude; my deeper advance into the heart of my own land.Close to our resting-place at the top of the pass there was a rude hut, and one or two wagons which had strained up from the other side were halting their smoking teams. Here, seated in the car again, as we waited to see the oxen unyoked and the boy paid, a girl came out from the little house with a large volume, in which she asked us to sign our names. The Cherub scrawled something; and as Dick was scribbling, Carmona strolled across, to see whether or no I entrusted my name to the book. I had meant not to do so, but now I would have changed my mind had not Colonel O'Donnel stopped me.“I wrote your name, Cristóbal,”said he, in his ambrosial voice; and the situation was saved. Carmona made some commonplace remark to account for his approach, and walked away with a self-conscious[pg 112]back, as Pilar's glance and Monica's crossed the distance between the two automobiles and met mischievously.The grey car took the lead again, and at a turn of the road it seemed that the whole world lay at our feet; yet it was not even all of Old Castile, so vast a country is my Spain.Far as the eye could travel spread the fair land, green with the tender green of spring, yellow with patches of golden sand, darkly tufted with woods; struck with flying shafts of light, ringed in with ethereal blue.Nothing could steal from me this illuminated missal of memories, and were I to be banished to-morrow, I should have Spain to keep in my heart, I said, as we rushed down the steep, winding way that serpentined along the southern slope of the Guadarrama. A breakneck road it was, but nobly engineered, twisting back upon itself in many coils, letting us fly with the speed of a bird to lower levels; and it seemed that scarcely had we sunk over the brink of the mountain than we were at the turn on the right which would lead to the Escurial.Straight before us, rising out of the bare mountain side and seeming a part of it, towered and stretched a building vaster than any I had seen even in the limitless spaces of dreamland. Were it not for its cold regularity, I should have thought myself approaching another desert of giants who made toys of monoliths and obelisks; but these appalling domes and towers could be the work of man alone. There was no toying here; all was forbidding and gloomy; for this was the Escurial—immense, sinister, as if fashioned from the grim product of those iron mines which gave its name.I could imagine the fanatical satisfaction Philip's dry mind had found in planning this monument to represent the gridiron on which Saint Lawrence was martyred. He who was to stand in history as the great Inquisitor, must build his monastery and palace in honour of a martyr! But Philip was the last man to have a sense of humour; and it was like him to appease an injured saint by giving him a church a thousand times bigger[pg 113]than the one destroyed on Saint Lawrence's own day, in the battle of San Quentin.“Wouldn't the Escurial be hideous if it were anywhere else but just here?”asked Pilar.She was right; for on the Sierra it seemed an expression of the Sierra; and in spite of Philip rather than because of him, it was splendid in the melancholy strength which made it a brother of mountains.We lunched on extremely Spanish food at afondaopposite the Escurial; and when the time came for sightseeing—a time for us, but not for the public—the Duke began by marshalling us all, except the weary Duchess and the lazy Cherub, through the great door guarded by Saint Lawrence. Once within, we saw the treasures, as a bird in flight sees the beauties of a town over which he swoops; but we did see them, and once I had three words and one look from Monica, before it occurred to Lady Vale-Avon to link an arm in her daughter's, in a sudden overflow of maternal affection.Carmona had made a point of the“influence”which could open for us doors that, for others, would remain shut; and he did smuggle us into the Library of Manuscripts, the Queen's Oratory, and the Capilla Mayor to see the royal tombs. But after we had stopped longer than he wished in the church, and the Choir, where Philip learned that Lepanto had saved Europe from the Turks, and listened to the sad music of Mary Stuart's requiem, the Duke promised something still better, in the palace.“What you shall see there,”he said,“is a secret. It was a secret of King Philip's—so great a secret that even the writers of guide-books know nothing of it; while, if a tourist should have heard a rumour and asked a question, the attendants would say,‘There's no such thing in existence.’Only the Royal Family know, a few privileged people about the Court, and the guardians of the Escurial. As for me, I was told by someone here—someone whom I myself placed in the palace.”My curiosity was excited; and even Dick, who resented this[pg 114]expedition, looked interested as we arrived at the palace—the great gridiron's handle. At the entrance Carmona separated himself from the rest of the party, saying that he must have a few words in private with the attendant who would show the rooms of Philip the Second. He walked ahead, engaged the brown-liveried guide in low-voiced conversation, and seemed to ask a question with some eagerness.Observing the pantomime from a distance, I fancied that, for some reason, Carmona was to be denied the privilege of which he had boasted; but, apparently, he did not intend to accept defeat without a struggle. He and the guide moved on, then stopped again to argue—this time with their backs to us; but, from the action of Carmona's elbows, I judged that he put his hand into his pocket. Five or six minutes later he returned, to announce that after some difficulty he had succeeded in getting his own way. We might go, unattended, into the private apartments of Philip the Second; and while we were there, other visitors would be kept out.“If there are any, they'll be taken another round,”said Carmona,“and won't be ready to come into the King's rooms until we're ready to come out.”The guide led us down the narrow staircase to the outer door of Philip's suite, then slipped away, shutting the door behind him. Lady Vale-Avon and Monica (the mother still clasping her daughter's arm), Pilar, Dick, Carmona, and I were now alone between the gloomy walls behind which the bigot and despot had lived his miserable life and died his miserable death.There was a chill in the sombre place which froze the spirit; yet I, for one, did not feel sad. I was conscious only of an excited expectancy, as if I were waiting for something to happen.We let our imagination set the meagre form of Philip in his chair, or by the desk at which he used to write; examined the grim relics of his monk-like existence; and finally moved to the death-chamber, set like a stage-box at the theatre, beside the high altar of the chapel.So small was the room that it was filled by our little party of six;[pg 115]yet I felt there another presence which none of us could see—a grey ghost agonising for his sins, through a bleak eternity.Monica felt it too, for she shivered, and exclaimed,“Let us go. This room seems haunted with evil. I can't breathe in it.”“But now for the secret,”said Carmona.“Would you guess at any hidden opening in these walls?”We stared critically about, and I began to test the wainscot, but the Duke stopped me.“You'd never find the place,”he said;“and I promised the person who told me not to give away the secret; but that doesn't prevent me from showing you what's behind the door.”He moved close to the wall, stood for an instant, then stepped back, as we heard a slight clicking sound, like the snap of a spring on an old box-lid. At the same time a part of the wainscoting rolled away, leaving a narrow aperture.It was dark on the other side, but Carmona took a gold match-box from his pocket and struck a bunch of little waxfosforos.“Philip had this cell made for a place of penance and self-torture,”he said,“and it's just as it used to be during his lifetime, before he was too ill to go in any more. His twisted wire scourge is there, with his blood on it, his horsehair shirt, and a girdle bristling with small, sharp spikes. Will you have a look, Lady Vale-Avon? I can't go with you, for the cell isn't big enough for two, but I'll hold the matches at the door.”Lady Vale-Avon is of the type of woman who enjoys seeing such things as these; and though she would not have tortured herself had she lived in feudal days, I am sure she would have dined calmly over an underground dungeon where an enemy—an inconvenient wretch like me, for instance—suffered the pangs of starvation.She squeezed into the cell, descending a couple of steps, remained for two or three minutes, and came out, pronouncing it extremely interesting.“Now, Lady Monica, it's your turn,”said Carmona; but Monica drew back,“I hate seeing torture-things,”said she,[pg 116]“and blood, even wicked old blood like Philip's, which I used to think, when I read about him in history, I'd love to shed. No, I won't go in, thank you.”Pilar also refused, for if she went she would certainly have a nightmare and dream she was walled up; thus there remained only the three men to inspect the hidden horrors.Carmona held his match-box to me, saying that when we had seen the place he would look in to refresh his recollections. But Dick calmly helped himself to severalfosforosand took first turn, probably suspecting something in the way of anoubliette, especially prepared for me.He reappeared presently, however, his suspicions allayed.“Beastly hole,”he remarked;“almost bad enough for Philip, though he did grill some of my best ancestors.”I took a couple of matches, lighting them on the Duke's box; then, bending my head low, and pushing in one shoulder at a time, I squirmed through the aperture. In so doing, however, I contrived to trip over Carmona's foot, which must have been thrust forward, staggered against the opposite wall of the narrow cell, and lost both my lighted vestas. Carmona exclaimed, I stumbled, and almost simultaneously the door slid into place with a sharp click.There was not space to fall at length. I merely lost my balance, and saved my head from a bump by shielding it with a raised arm, I steadied myself in a second or two; but I was in black darkness. Outside I could hear a confused murmur of voices, and would have given something to know what Dick was saying at the moment.I was thinking that I should not like to be a prisoner in this hole (only large enough for the swing of Philip's scourge) for many hours on end, when there came an imperative tapping.“Holloa!”I answered, expecting to hear Dick speak in return; but it was Carmona's voice which replied. Evidently he was speaking with his mouth close to the secret door.“I'm very sorry for this accident,”said he distinctly.“When[pg 117]you stumbled, you knocked my arm, and made me touch the spring. Unfortunately the door closed with such a crash, that the spring seems out of order, and I can't move it. But if you'll be patient a few minutes, I'll look for an attendant who understands the thing, to bail you out of gaol.”If I had been Lieutenant Cristóbal O'Donnel I would have heard no more in the rhyming junction of those words“gaol”and“bail”than met the ear, but being the man I was—the man he suspected me to be—I did hear more; and I believed that he wished me to catch a double meaning.“Does he mean to hand me over to the police now, on suspicion?”I wondered in my black cell—“before Monica's eyes?”But aloud I said,“Thanks; don't be too long, or I shall be tempted to smash the door.”“You'll find that impossible,”answered Carmona.“Don't worry if I seem to be gone an age. There's only one man on duty to-day who knows the secret of this room; I asked for him when we came, but his comrade said he was away on leave till four o'clock. It must be that now, and I'll have him here as soon as possible. He will be the more pleased to set you free, as he's an old friend of yours. You remember little Rafael Calmenare?”I was silent, seeing, as if by the glare of lightning, the whole design of the trap, and seeming to see also the triumph which must be in Carmona's eyes. But the pause had not lengthened to a second, when I heard Pilar's voice, speaking also close to the door.“Of course you remember, Cristóbal. Rafael Calmenare of the Duke'sganaderia. But it's a long time since he went away.”“After he was gored by Nero and lost his health, through the influence of a friend at Court I got him a place here,”I heard Carmona say. Then raising his voice for my ears, he went on,“Poor Rafael will be pleased to see you again. You must have played with him when a boy. I'm off to find him now.”Silence followed these last words. I could picture the consternation of Dick and Pilar. Neither could do anything to help[pg 118]me, nor could I help myself. I could but wait in this suffocating black hole for the moment when a stranger should give me light, and exclaim,“This is not Don Cristóbal!”Almost I admired Carmona for his quick wit. After a few moments of rage, at sight of the suspected man of Burgos Cathedral on his track in the red motor-car, the thought of the Escurial and his old servant must have sprung into his mind.Had Calmenare been available at first, Carmona would have been spared the trouble of shutting me up in Philip the Bigot's torture-chamber; but hard pressed for an excuse to keep us at the Escurial till his man came back, he had put me where I could be kept while needed. And now that he was gone in search of Rafael, we three loyal comrades could not discuss the situation, because of Lady Vale-Avon's presence.A brilliant stroke of Carmona's to have me betrayed by another than himself, so that Monica might not bear him a grudge! Who was this person masquerading as an officer of the Spanish army? would be the first question of the police. And the answer need not be long in coming. The Duke had reason to congratulate himself; I had been a fool to drop like a fly into his net, and now that I was in, I saw no way out.“Oh, how I wish we could open the secret door!”I heard Monica exclaim.“I can't even see exactly where it is now,”Pilar said.“Cristóbal?”“Yes,”I answered.“Poor little Rafael; a good fellow, wasn't he?”“Very good,”I replied. To what end was she working? I wondered. But I was not to be made wiser. Before she had time to finish the hint I heard Carmona speaking.“I've sent for Calmenare, who has returned, and will be here in a few minutes,”he called to me. It was like him to hurry back, so that by no possible means could the three suspected ones reach any understanding.The moments dragged on, and I could have lashed myself[pg 119]with Philip's scourge in fury at the rashness which might involve the whole O'Donnel family in my disaster. Never had I been able to think less clearly; but perhaps it was the stifling atmosphere of the cell which made me feel that fingers in a mailed glove were clenched round my temples.Outside, voices buzzed; but those who spoke must have stood at a distance, for I could catch no words. Then, at last, there was a new voice in the room. Calmenare had come.“How do you do, Don Rafael?”Pilar exclaimed, as politely as if she had addressed an equal.“I'm glad to see you again. I've been waiting for you impatiently. Only think,my dear brother Cristóbal, whom you know so well, is in that dreadful place and can't get out, because the Señor Duque shut him in—by mistake—and broke the spring.”“I do not find that it is broken, señorita,”answered the new voice.“I couldn't make it work,”Carmona said hastily.Click! went the spring under skilled fingers. The door sliding back gave me a rush of light and air which set me blinking for a second or two; and there I stood at the stranger's mercy.What I saw, when my suddenly contracted pupils expanded, was a little man in the palace livery; a pale little man with insignificant features, and large, steady eyes. There was absolutely no expression in his face as for one brief instant our glances met. Then—“God be with you, Don Cristóbal,”said he.“I am glad to have been even of this slight service. I hope, señorito, you have not suffered from lack of air?”“Very little,”said I. I held out my hand. He took it respectfully.“Is it long since you saw each other?”asked Carmona, sallow and red by turns.“About two years only, Señor Duque,”replied his ex-servant, expressionless as before, and quietly respectful to all.“I could not forget the date, for the Señor Colonel and the señorita, as well as the señorito himself, were always very good to me.”[pg 120]The Duke was silenced. The test invented by himself had failed. Calmenare accepted me as Cristóbal O'Donnel; he was obliged to accept me too—at least for the present.“Shall we get out of this place?”he said to Lady Vale-Avon.She swept her daughter with her; but Monica had a backward look for me, sparkling now with malice for Carmona, radiant with relief for Casa Triana.We said good-bye to Calmenare in the Duke's presence; and I would have pressed a gold piece into his hand for“opening my prison door,”but he would not have it. Afterwards, while we followed the grey car on the downhill road to Madrid, Pilar told the whole story with dramatic effect to the Cherub.“My one hope was in Rafael,”she said.“I was good to him, you remember, when he was ill. And he and I had a great sympathy over Corcito, the dear grey bull. I prayed he'd never forgiven the Duke for that crime, and that he'd still be grateful to me. Well, I looked Rafael straight in the eyes when I said,‘My brother Cristóbal is in that place, shut up by the Duke, who has broken the spring.’With all my soul I willed him to understand, and he did.‘If the señorita chooses to have a strange gentleman for her brother, he is her brother for me,’is what he said to himself; no more! But what if hehadn't?”“That's where I should have come in,”remarked Dick.“What would you have done?”asked Pilar, breathless.“I don't know,”said Dick.“I only know I should havedoneit; and that if I had, maybe Carmona wouldn't have been feeling as well as he feels now.”

Pilar said that the oxen were idiotic dears to break their hearts for nothing, not even a percentage on the twenty pesetas. But four-footed beasts are tragically conscientious, and these farmyard martyrs accomplished their task without a groan, while the Gloria crept up close behind on her own power.

I thanked the patron saint of cow creation when the straining brutes got to the top. The summit of the pass was crowned by a lion on a granite pedestal; a lion with a cold air of pride in his mission of marking the limit between Old Castile and New. For me also he marked something for which I owed him gratitude; my deeper advance into the heart of my own land.

Close to our resting-place at the top of the pass there was a rude hut, and one or two wagons which had strained up from the other side were halting their smoking teams. Here, seated in the car again, as we waited to see the oxen unyoked and the boy paid, a girl came out from the little house with a large volume, in which she asked us to sign our names. The Cherub scrawled something; and as Dick was scribbling, Carmona strolled across, to see whether or no I entrusted my name to the book. I had meant not to do so, but now I would have changed my mind had not Colonel O'Donnel stopped me.“I wrote your name, Cristóbal,”said he, in his ambrosial voice; and the situation was saved. Carmona made some commonplace remark to account for his approach, and walked away with a self-conscious[pg 112]back, as Pilar's glance and Monica's crossed the distance between the two automobiles and met mischievously.

The grey car took the lead again, and at a turn of the road it seemed that the whole world lay at our feet; yet it was not even all of Old Castile, so vast a country is my Spain.

Far as the eye could travel spread the fair land, green with the tender green of spring, yellow with patches of golden sand, darkly tufted with woods; struck with flying shafts of light, ringed in with ethereal blue.

Nothing could steal from me this illuminated missal of memories, and were I to be banished to-morrow, I should have Spain to keep in my heart, I said, as we rushed down the steep, winding way that serpentined along the southern slope of the Guadarrama. A breakneck road it was, but nobly engineered, twisting back upon itself in many coils, letting us fly with the speed of a bird to lower levels; and it seemed that scarcely had we sunk over the brink of the mountain than we were at the turn on the right which would lead to the Escurial.

Straight before us, rising out of the bare mountain side and seeming a part of it, towered and stretched a building vaster than any I had seen even in the limitless spaces of dreamland. Were it not for its cold regularity, I should have thought myself approaching another desert of giants who made toys of monoliths and obelisks; but these appalling domes and towers could be the work of man alone. There was no toying here; all was forbidding and gloomy; for this was the Escurial—immense, sinister, as if fashioned from the grim product of those iron mines which gave its name.

I could imagine the fanatical satisfaction Philip's dry mind had found in planning this monument to represent the gridiron on which Saint Lawrence was martyred. He who was to stand in history as the great Inquisitor, must build his monastery and palace in honour of a martyr! But Philip was the last man to have a sense of humour; and it was like him to appease an injured saint by giving him a church a thousand times bigger[pg 113]than the one destroyed on Saint Lawrence's own day, in the battle of San Quentin.

“Wouldn't the Escurial be hideous if it were anywhere else but just here?”asked Pilar.

She was right; for on the Sierra it seemed an expression of the Sierra; and in spite of Philip rather than because of him, it was splendid in the melancholy strength which made it a brother of mountains.

We lunched on extremely Spanish food at afondaopposite the Escurial; and when the time came for sightseeing—a time for us, but not for the public—the Duke began by marshalling us all, except the weary Duchess and the lazy Cherub, through the great door guarded by Saint Lawrence. Once within, we saw the treasures, as a bird in flight sees the beauties of a town over which he swoops; but we did see them, and once I had three words and one look from Monica, before it occurred to Lady Vale-Avon to link an arm in her daughter's, in a sudden overflow of maternal affection.

Carmona had made a point of the“influence”which could open for us doors that, for others, would remain shut; and he did smuggle us into the Library of Manuscripts, the Queen's Oratory, and the Capilla Mayor to see the royal tombs. But after we had stopped longer than he wished in the church, and the Choir, where Philip learned that Lepanto had saved Europe from the Turks, and listened to the sad music of Mary Stuart's requiem, the Duke promised something still better, in the palace.“What you shall see there,”he said,“is a secret. It was a secret of King Philip's—so great a secret that even the writers of guide-books know nothing of it; while, if a tourist should have heard a rumour and asked a question, the attendants would say,‘There's no such thing in existence.’Only the Royal Family know, a few privileged people about the Court, and the guardians of the Escurial. As for me, I was told by someone here—someone whom I myself placed in the palace.”

My curiosity was excited; and even Dick, who resented this[pg 114]expedition, looked interested as we arrived at the palace—the great gridiron's handle. At the entrance Carmona separated himself from the rest of the party, saying that he must have a few words in private with the attendant who would show the rooms of Philip the Second. He walked ahead, engaged the brown-liveried guide in low-voiced conversation, and seemed to ask a question with some eagerness.

Observing the pantomime from a distance, I fancied that, for some reason, Carmona was to be denied the privilege of which he had boasted; but, apparently, he did not intend to accept defeat without a struggle. He and the guide moved on, then stopped again to argue—this time with their backs to us; but, from the action of Carmona's elbows, I judged that he put his hand into his pocket. Five or six minutes later he returned, to announce that after some difficulty he had succeeded in getting his own way. We might go, unattended, into the private apartments of Philip the Second; and while we were there, other visitors would be kept out.“If there are any, they'll be taken another round,”said Carmona,“and won't be ready to come into the King's rooms until we're ready to come out.”

The guide led us down the narrow staircase to the outer door of Philip's suite, then slipped away, shutting the door behind him. Lady Vale-Avon and Monica (the mother still clasping her daughter's arm), Pilar, Dick, Carmona, and I were now alone between the gloomy walls behind which the bigot and despot had lived his miserable life and died his miserable death.

There was a chill in the sombre place which froze the spirit; yet I, for one, did not feel sad. I was conscious only of an excited expectancy, as if I were waiting for something to happen.

We let our imagination set the meagre form of Philip in his chair, or by the desk at which he used to write; examined the grim relics of his monk-like existence; and finally moved to the death-chamber, set like a stage-box at the theatre, beside the high altar of the chapel.

So small was the room that it was filled by our little party of six;[pg 115]yet I felt there another presence which none of us could see—a grey ghost agonising for his sins, through a bleak eternity.

Monica felt it too, for she shivered, and exclaimed,“Let us go. This room seems haunted with evil. I can't breathe in it.”

“But now for the secret,”said Carmona.“Would you guess at any hidden opening in these walls?”

We stared critically about, and I began to test the wainscot, but the Duke stopped me.“You'd never find the place,”he said;“and I promised the person who told me not to give away the secret; but that doesn't prevent me from showing you what's behind the door.”

He moved close to the wall, stood for an instant, then stepped back, as we heard a slight clicking sound, like the snap of a spring on an old box-lid. At the same time a part of the wainscoting rolled away, leaving a narrow aperture.

It was dark on the other side, but Carmona took a gold match-box from his pocket and struck a bunch of little waxfosforos.

“Philip had this cell made for a place of penance and self-torture,”he said,“and it's just as it used to be during his lifetime, before he was too ill to go in any more. His twisted wire scourge is there, with his blood on it, his horsehair shirt, and a girdle bristling with small, sharp spikes. Will you have a look, Lady Vale-Avon? I can't go with you, for the cell isn't big enough for two, but I'll hold the matches at the door.”

Lady Vale-Avon is of the type of woman who enjoys seeing such things as these; and though she would not have tortured herself had she lived in feudal days, I am sure she would have dined calmly over an underground dungeon where an enemy—an inconvenient wretch like me, for instance—suffered the pangs of starvation.

She squeezed into the cell, descending a couple of steps, remained for two or three minutes, and came out, pronouncing it extremely interesting.

“Now, Lady Monica, it's your turn,”said Carmona; but Monica drew back,“I hate seeing torture-things,”said she,[pg 116]“and blood, even wicked old blood like Philip's, which I used to think, when I read about him in history, I'd love to shed. No, I won't go in, thank you.”

Pilar also refused, for if she went she would certainly have a nightmare and dream she was walled up; thus there remained only the three men to inspect the hidden horrors.

Carmona held his match-box to me, saying that when we had seen the place he would look in to refresh his recollections. But Dick calmly helped himself to severalfosforosand took first turn, probably suspecting something in the way of anoubliette, especially prepared for me.

He reappeared presently, however, his suspicions allayed.“Beastly hole,”he remarked;“almost bad enough for Philip, though he did grill some of my best ancestors.”

I took a couple of matches, lighting them on the Duke's box; then, bending my head low, and pushing in one shoulder at a time, I squirmed through the aperture. In so doing, however, I contrived to trip over Carmona's foot, which must have been thrust forward, staggered against the opposite wall of the narrow cell, and lost both my lighted vestas. Carmona exclaimed, I stumbled, and almost simultaneously the door slid into place with a sharp click.

There was not space to fall at length. I merely lost my balance, and saved my head from a bump by shielding it with a raised arm, I steadied myself in a second or two; but I was in black darkness. Outside I could hear a confused murmur of voices, and would have given something to know what Dick was saying at the moment.

I was thinking that I should not like to be a prisoner in this hole (only large enough for the swing of Philip's scourge) for many hours on end, when there came an imperative tapping.“Holloa!”I answered, expecting to hear Dick speak in return; but it was Carmona's voice which replied. Evidently he was speaking with his mouth close to the secret door.

“I'm very sorry for this accident,”said he distinctly.“When[pg 117]you stumbled, you knocked my arm, and made me touch the spring. Unfortunately the door closed with such a crash, that the spring seems out of order, and I can't move it. But if you'll be patient a few minutes, I'll look for an attendant who understands the thing, to bail you out of gaol.”

If I had been Lieutenant Cristóbal O'Donnel I would have heard no more in the rhyming junction of those words“gaol”and“bail”than met the ear, but being the man I was—the man he suspected me to be—I did hear more; and I believed that he wished me to catch a double meaning.

“Does he mean to hand me over to the police now, on suspicion?”I wondered in my black cell—“before Monica's eyes?”But aloud I said,“Thanks; don't be too long, or I shall be tempted to smash the door.”

“You'll find that impossible,”answered Carmona.“Don't worry if I seem to be gone an age. There's only one man on duty to-day who knows the secret of this room; I asked for him when we came, but his comrade said he was away on leave till four o'clock. It must be that now, and I'll have him here as soon as possible. He will be the more pleased to set you free, as he's an old friend of yours. You remember little Rafael Calmenare?”

I was silent, seeing, as if by the glare of lightning, the whole design of the trap, and seeming to see also the triumph which must be in Carmona's eyes. But the pause had not lengthened to a second, when I heard Pilar's voice, speaking also close to the door.

“Of course you remember, Cristóbal. Rafael Calmenare of the Duke'sganaderia. But it's a long time since he went away.”

“After he was gored by Nero and lost his health, through the influence of a friend at Court I got him a place here,”I heard Carmona say. Then raising his voice for my ears, he went on,“Poor Rafael will be pleased to see you again. You must have played with him when a boy. I'm off to find him now.”

Silence followed these last words. I could picture the consternation of Dick and Pilar. Neither could do anything to help[pg 118]me, nor could I help myself. I could but wait in this suffocating black hole for the moment when a stranger should give me light, and exclaim,“This is not Don Cristóbal!”

Almost I admired Carmona for his quick wit. After a few moments of rage, at sight of the suspected man of Burgos Cathedral on his track in the red motor-car, the thought of the Escurial and his old servant must have sprung into his mind.

Had Calmenare been available at first, Carmona would have been spared the trouble of shutting me up in Philip the Bigot's torture-chamber; but hard pressed for an excuse to keep us at the Escurial till his man came back, he had put me where I could be kept while needed. And now that he was gone in search of Rafael, we three loyal comrades could not discuss the situation, because of Lady Vale-Avon's presence.

A brilliant stroke of Carmona's to have me betrayed by another than himself, so that Monica might not bear him a grudge! Who was this person masquerading as an officer of the Spanish army? would be the first question of the police. And the answer need not be long in coming. The Duke had reason to congratulate himself; I had been a fool to drop like a fly into his net, and now that I was in, I saw no way out.

“Oh, how I wish we could open the secret door!”I heard Monica exclaim.

“I can't even see exactly where it is now,”Pilar said.“Cristóbal?”

“Yes,”I answered.

“Poor little Rafael; a good fellow, wasn't he?”

“Very good,”I replied. To what end was she working? I wondered. But I was not to be made wiser. Before she had time to finish the hint I heard Carmona speaking.

“I've sent for Calmenare, who has returned, and will be here in a few minutes,”he called to me. It was like him to hurry back, so that by no possible means could the three suspected ones reach any understanding.

The moments dragged on, and I could have lashed myself[pg 119]with Philip's scourge in fury at the rashness which might involve the whole O'Donnel family in my disaster. Never had I been able to think less clearly; but perhaps it was the stifling atmosphere of the cell which made me feel that fingers in a mailed glove were clenched round my temples.

Outside, voices buzzed; but those who spoke must have stood at a distance, for I could catch no words. Then, at last, there was a new voice in the room. Calmenare had come.

“How do you do, Don Rafael?”Pilar exclaimed, as politely as if she had addressed an equal.“I'm glad to see you again. I've been waiting for you impatiently. Only think,my dear brother Cristóbal, whom you know so well, is in that dreadful place and can't get out, because the Señor Duque shut him in—by mistake—and broke the spring.”

“I do not find that it is broken, señorita,”answered the new voice.

“I couldn't make it work,”Carmona said hastily.

Click! went the spring under skilled fingers. The door sliding back gave me a rush of light and air which set me blinking for a second or two; and there I stood at the stranger's mercy.

What I saw, when my suddenly contracted pupils expanded, was a little man in the palace livery; a pale little man with insignificant features, and large, steady eyes. There was absolutely no expression in his face as for one brief instant our glances met. Then—“God be with you, Don Cristóbal,”said he.“I am glad to have been even of this slight service. I hope, señorito, you have not suffered from lack of air?”

“Very little,”said I. I held out my hand. He took it respectfully.

“Is it long since you saw each other?”asked Carmona, sallow and red by turns.

“About two years only, Señor Duque,”replied his ex-servant, expressionless as before, and quietly respectful to all.“I could not forget the date, for the Señor Colonel and the señorita, as well as the señorito himself, were always very good to me.”

[pg 120]The Duke was silenced. The test invented by himself had failed. Calmenare accepted me as Cristóbal O'Donnel; he was obliged to accept me too—at least for the present.

“Shall we get out of this place?”he said to Lady Vale-Avon.

She swept her daughter with her; but Monica had a backward look for me, sparkling now with malice for Carmona, radiant with relief for Casa Triana.

We said good-bye to Calmenare in the Duke's presence; and I would have pressed a gold piece into his hand for“opening my prison door,”but he would not have it. Afterwards, while we followed the grey car on the downhill road to Madrid, Pilar told the whole story with dramatic effect to the Cherub.

“My one hope was in Rafael,”she said.“I was good to him, you remember, when he was ill. And he and I had a great sympathy over Corcito, the dear grey bull. I prayed he'd never forgiven the Duke for that crime, and that he'd still be grateful to me. Well, I looked Rafael straight in the eyes when I said,‘My brother Cristóbal is in that place, shut up by the Duke, who has broken the spring.’With all my soul I willed him to understand, and he did.‘If the señorita chooses to have a strange gentleman for her brother, he is her brother for me,’is what he said to himself; no more! But what if hehadn't?”

“That's where I should have come in,”remarked Dick.

“What would you have done?”asked Pilar, breathless.

“I don't know,”said Dick.“I only know I should havedoneit; and that if I had, maybe Carmona wouldn't have been feeling as well as he feels now.”

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