XXIII

[pg 174]XXIIIThe Glorification of MonicaSlowing up, we were almost upon the group; and for once we were welcome to our enemies. Even Carmona's face brightened, a flicker of hope lit Lady Vale-Avon's grey eyes; and the Duchess deliberately courted us with a smile.As for Monica, she was radiant as a child who has been surprised by the home-coming of loved ones; yet there was a new wistfulness in her eyes, despite the joy she showed.“Oh, how glorious that you've come to the rescue!”she cried, all dimples and roses. Still, she looked from me to Pilar, and from Pilar to me, as if she longed to ask one or the other some question which it was impossible to speak; and I said to myself that it would go hard with me if I did not find out before I was many hours older, what that question was.Any port is welcome in a storm or among fellow-motorists, if you are helpless by the roadside with several ladies when night is coming on; and Carmona's first words showed that he had no scruple in making use of us. But with the trials he had gone through, and his natural preference for the help of any other car rather than the hated Gloria, he was in a black mood. He wished to be civil, lest we should be goaded into leaving him in the lurch; yet it was plainly such an effort that I could have laughed aloud. Pilar would have been able to quote paragraph and page of her Dream-Book.The worst damage to the car was a broken spring, though something seemed to have gone wrong also with the ignition in[pg 175]that disastrous bump into thecaniveau. They had been where we found them for a couple of hours, Carmona admitted, without encountering any vehicle or animal to give them a tow. The first hope had been to stagger on to Manzanares (which originally they had meant to pass) with a broken spring; but the bee in the motor's bonnet could not be made to buzz, and in despair, Carmona had been about to send his chauffeur on foot, in search of some conveyance for the ladies and their luggage. More hours must have passed, at best, before the man could have returned to the rescue, and already everybody was hungry.The ladies of the Duke's party had to be transferred to the Gloria; and Dick, with airs of ownership, urged vague and voluble reasons why I should be their companion in the tonneau. We were the masters of the situation, and Carmona's face, as he was obliged to take his seat beside the chauffeur who must steer the car in tow, repaid me for grievous wrongs.Pilar, not to be outdone in ingenuity by Dick, did for me what I could not do for myself, in contriving that I should sit next to Monica. Though I could say nothing for her ears which other ears might not hear, it was a joy to feel her slight shoulder nestling warm against my arm, to know that she could not be snatched from me by her mother or Carmona, but that as it was now, so it must be for many moments, perhaps an hour, to come. There was also satisfaction to be got from the fact that my enemy, bumping on behind in his own disabled car (propelled by our generosity and power), was glaring with malice, envy, and all uncharitableness at my back.My one regret in these moments which should have been perfect, was that my prophetic soul hadn't caused me to write a long letter to Monica, which I might have been able to slip into her hand under cover of rugs and darkness.Ropes had to light the lamps before we saw more of Manzanares than an illusive church spire which kept appearing and disappearing like a will-o'-the-wisp. But the petrol held out, and[pg 176]the Gloria's breathing was regular, despite the weight she had to tow over ruts and across gutters. Once, however, Ropes looked back at me with an expressive movement of the shoulders which I interpreted as,“we're lucky if we get there!”so I could have shouted“hurrah!”at sight of the first houses, though they brought my last moment of happiness.Another instant, and the population of Manzanares was answering to the thrum of our motor, as soldiers to the call of the drum. From somewhere, their saints alone knew where, an army of children poured into the long straight street, and as we slowed to avoid wholesale murder, they took advantage of our consideration to swarm up the car like ants. They ran shouting beside us, climbed on to the steps, hung on behind, fighting so ruthlessly for choice positions that they all but fell under the wheels. One would not have supposed there could be other children left in Spain. How there could be room for these in the town of Manzanares was a wonder; how they could all have turned out on the second in their thousands, was a miracle; and their promptness would have done credit to any commander.The shrill cries of this legion, drowning the sound of the motor, and increasing as the contingent was swelled from each side street, roused the town. Families left their tables and rushed to the door, their supper in their hands. Bakers with white arms left to-morrow's bread in the troughs; a group of farriers shoeing a horse stopped work, until the glowing iron paled. Shopkeepers who had lighted their windows with a blaze of electricity, ran into the street. Mules and donkeys tied to doorposts shared the general excitement, plunged and reared before the advance of the human breaker with the car on its crest snapped their cords, and dashed into their master's houses.Never, among all our successes, had we made such asuccés fouas this; but then, never before had we had a car in tow. Half our triumph belonged to the Lecomte; yet either of us would gladly have dispensed with all; and had it not been for a small but determined policeman who struggled to preserve the[pg 177]credit of the town, we might have been half the night fighting our way to an hotel.He dealt blows and exhortations indiscriminately, piloted us through side streets which it would never have occurred to our imagination to enter, and with exertions worthy of him who“singly kept the bridge,”helped us make a lane for the ladies to dart into the door of the littlefonda.It was an iron door of elaborate openwork, leading, Moorish fashion, through a shallow vestibule into apatio—the first we had seen on our way south; and if it had not been slammed shut with a loud click, by some person inside, half Manzanares would have poured after the fugitives.Assured of the ladies' safety, the men of the two (outwardly) united parties remained to help the chauffeurs and a bewildered landlord to take down luggage. Overwhelmed by a wave of halfgrown children and a thick spray of babies, Carmona's man lost his presence of mind. The two cars had hardly stopped before the little creatures were in them, and on them, and under them, trying to pinch the tyres, blowing the horn, squalling, laughing, crying.“Mon Dieu, c'est un obsession!”wailed the unfortunate Frenchman; and even the imperturbable Ropes showed signs of“nerves.”As fast as the thronging goblins were beaten off, they were up again in redoubled force; but so merry they were, and so handsome was each bold brown face, with its dazzling eyes, that it was impossible to be angry. Somehow, we rescued the luggage, and with the aid of the landlord pitched, or slid, or rolled it through the door, momentarily opened.“For Heaven's sake, sir, see me through this!”implored Ropes, noticing that the men of the party were on the point of following the luggage.“Hate to trouble you, but I don't think my Spanish will run to it.”In pity I climbed into the car to go with him to the stable which the landlord indicated as our garage. It was an experience to be remembered in nightmares; yet there was in it a sort of schoolboy pleasure. We seemed to have done[pg 178]battle against the whole force of the army out against us; nevertheless when we returned to thefonda, swept along by a large bodyguard, we found a regiment assembled round the door. How we got through was food for another wild dream, but we did get through, to stand panting on the other side of the grating, in thepatio.Dozens of dark faces were pressed against the bars, like tier above tier of glowing pansies in a flower-bed; and we knew at last the sensation of those who are the observed, not the observers, in a menagerie.Everyone was in thepatio, where electric lights hanging from the balconies mingled with rich yellow lamplight and ruddy firelight streaming from the kitchen. All the luggage was piled anyhow, in a chaotic heap surging with suit-cases, boiling with dressing-bags; while near by, like Marius and a friend or two at the ruins of Carthage, stood the Duchess, Lady Vale-Avon, Carmona, Dick, and the Cherub. Monica and Pilar had been talking at a distance with a young girl of the house, but seeing me gravitate in their direction, Lady Vale-Avon called her daughter.“The ladies are saying they can't stay here,”announced Dick,his voice in sympathy with a twinkle in his eyes.“I'm not saying so,”cut in Monica.“I think it will be fun; a real adventure. The landlady's wonderful, and all her daughters and nieces beauties. If we're nice to them, they'll be adorable to us.”“The place is a den!”exclaimed Lady Vale-Avon.“There must be something better in the town.”“I'm afraid there isn't,”said the Duke.“This accident has made me helpless. I'm horribly sorry; but we can't get on anywhere else to-night.”“We can sit up,”said the Duchess,“in the automobile.”“Do let's look at the rooms,”begged Monica.“And don't let them see we're finding fault. Their feelings will be hurt.”“What nonsense!”replied Lady Vale-Avon.“As if they had feelings!”[pg 179]“If you don't consider them, they won't take pains to make you comfortable,”I said, knowing by instinct the people with whom we had to deal.“They're beginning to suspect already that something's wrong, and judging from the expression of their faces it will take only a little more for the landlord to say he has no rooms. Then we really may have to sit in the automobiles.”The keeper of thefondaand his family, who had come so warmly to welcome the strangers, were now hovering aloof, silent and suspicious, their spirits dashed by the contemptuous looks of Lady Vale-Avon and the Duchess. Standing in semi-darkness, the landlord's face was a blur of brown shadow, featureless, save for a pair of enormous eyes burning with an emotion which was no longer hospitality. His wife, whose broad shoulder was pressed against her husband's as if to form a line of defence, was a dark-browed, gypsy-like woman, who must once have been beautiful, and might now be formidable. Behind them were grouped a handsome boy, and three or four extraordinarily pretty girls with red and white roses in their hair.“They wouldn't dare turn us out!”exclaimed Lady Vale-Avon.“They can never have had persons of our sort before.”“If you asked, they'd probably retort that Dukes and Marquesses were thick as blackberries,”said I.She glanced at Carmona, hoping for support, but he shrugged his shoulders in despair; and a look from me was a signal for the Cherub to step forward.The atmosphere had begun to tingle, and in a few moments more it might have been too late to make peace with these proud and self-respecting people, who had never submitted to indignity. But in the space of six seconds the magnetism of the Cherub had begun to do its work. He murmured, nodded, and smiled, took the family into his confidence with a few graphic gestures, explained that the ladies were upset by an accident, appealed to the landlord's chivalry, and the landlady's heart. Gathering frowns were chased away by smiles; and when Monica showed[pg 180]her dimples to the boy and girls with a look which pleaded for kindness, the battle was fought and won.They had not many bedrooms. Several were engaged bycommercialtravellers, but these gentlemen should be stowed into one room, their clothing and luggage moved at once. Oh, they would not object when they learned that it was a question of accommodating ladies; or if they did, they must eat their objections for supper; it was no matter. And the landlord and landlady would give up their room, a good one, their worships need have no fear. All should be ready in the opening and closing of an eye. But would we meanwhile have supper? There was always enough for a few unexpected ones.Having listened so far, the Cherub turned blandly to Carmona. These arrangements need not include the Señor Duque's party, unless he liked, of course, but—his palms were extended as if to receive the decision. Plump it fell into them. Everyone must stay, and make the best of it.So the ladies were bundled into a room where they might get rid of the dust, and the men into another; clean rooms, with whitewashed walls, bare save for a pictured saint or two in lurid colours; floors covered with coarse, bright matting; and iron beds with lace-frilled and embroidered pillows.In a quarter of an hour everyone was ready for dinner, but five out of fifteen minutes I had given to the hasty scribbling of a pencilled note for Monica. I hoped to slip it into her hand in the dining-room, but she was closely under guard; and Carmona annexed four seats at the head of the long table, by which manœuvre he secured isolation for his party. It was safe from any sortie of ours, as there was a scattered contingent of commercial travellers already earnestly engaged in dining on either side of the table. Two polite men on the left, and three on the right, all with napkins tucked under their chins, rose, offering to move rather than divide friends; but Carmona assured them that the sacrifice was unnecessary. As they were all paralysed by Monica's beauty, of a type so different from any to which[pg 181]they were accustomed, they had not the self-command to protest; and as dinner went on (in many courses of which the landlord was evidently proud), they could scarcely do justice to theirmerluzaserved with grilled lemon and minced red Spanish pepper; theirtortillaof eggs, potatoes, peas, and ham; their pigeons with olives, or even their freshly baked maccaroni, for gazing languorously at the vision of pink and white and gold.Such charms as Pilar's, though unsurpassable of their kind, went for nothing with these ardent gentlemen; and even the landlord's son, daughters, and nieces who waited upon their guests, forgot half their duties in abject admiration.“An angel!”“a saint!”“a princess of fairyland!”were a few of their whispered adjectives; and when the object of their worship was snatched away by her mother and the Duchess, before the goats'-milk cheese had been brought round, a gloom fell upon the room. The commercial travellers galloped through the remainder of the meal, and went out, hoping perhaps, if they promenaded the street, to have the joy of seeing a light in the radiant being's window. The pretty girls of the household vanished with murmured excuses, leaving us at the mercy of the boy, who sighed grievously, dropped a sugar bowl, and spilled coffee within an ace of the Cherub's shoulder.Pilar presently disappeared also, leaving her three men alone at the table, observed only by a few dozen eager faces pressed against the iron bars protecting the open window.Soon we heard peals of laughter from thepatio; the pretty girls were sallying forth on a foraging expedition in search of a warming-pan to heat the beds of the three great ladies, who feared dampness. In twenty minutes they came back, and we arrived in thepatioin time to see the triumphal entrance of four or five charming creatures, bearing among them a long-handled brass vessel which had probably existed since the days of Philip the Second. But this was only the beginning of the fun; and we made an excuse of our cigarettes to linger, and hear what we could not see.[pg 182]It was not a beautifulpatio; and the public still surged outside the iron-grated door in the hope of further insight into the private lives of the travelling menagerie; but our luggage had been carried to the rooms which were now ready (thanks to the complaisance of the dazzled commercial gentlemen), and there were garden seats, on which we settled ourselves in spite of the chill in the evening air.From the rooms above we heard laughter and ecstatic cries. Evidently the warming-pan was making a sensation as it went its round, or something else had happened; and when at last the girls trooped downstairs from the balcony, I beckoned them to come our way. They skipped to us, wild with delight at the prospect of pouring out their hearts to an appreciative audience.The great warming-pan, stuffed with embers that glowed and paled, was laid on the tiled pavement while the girls wove themselves into a group, with interlacing arms.“Why are you so happy?”I asked“Happy? We have been in paradise, with the angels,”replied the prettiest girl with crimson roses stuck in a bank of copper hair.“There was but one angel,”objected her brunette cousin.“That is true. The two old ones think themselves everything, but they are less than nothing. I would not change my years for theirs, with their jewels and their quarterings. Thanks be to God, in our Spain, we are all as noble as the nobles, or at least in this province!”“You are also all beautiful!”said I.“That you can say so, señor, after seeing that wonder!”exclaimed the landlord's eldest daughter, a creature of carnation and flame.“Ah, the joy of it, we have been undressing her!”“If you could have seen her, with gold hair down to her knees!”gasped a gypsy of fifteen.“And when we had got her dress off, and she was in her—”“Hush, Micaela! it is not seemly that you should mention such garments in the presence ofseñores!”broke in the girl of the copper coronet."Now you are as bad as I was, Mariquita!"NOW YOU ARE AS BAD AS I WAS, MARIQUITA[pg 183]“But why, then, since they are most beautiful? You know well, Mariquita, you yourself said they were like the handwork of fairies, and her shoulders—”“Be silent, foolish one, or I shall have to burn your nose off with the warming-pan!”“And what did the elder ladies say to the young lady's new maids?”I asked quickly, as great eyes began to flash, and scarlet lips to pout.Back came the smiles, and the maidens fell into a fit of schoolgirl giggling.“There was but one Majesty there, praise be to the saints, the English one, who is no doubt the mother of our lady angel. They have two rooms between them, but that of the señorita is tiny, with no door of its own, and only a square glazed hole for a window, though the bed is as good as any, and we have given it the best linen. When we took in the warming-pan, our angel tried to say in Spanish that she was sure our beds were dry and well aired, as indeed they were. She had taken off her bodice, and was undoing her hair, which was so beautiful we could have fallen down and prayed to her as a saint. Then we could not resist, but began helping her to undress, talking about her beauty. She was not offended, though we kissed her hands, and that silly Micaela one of her tiny white feet when we had pulled off the stocking—”“Now you are as bad as I was, Mariquita.”“No, indeed; what is a stocking? A thing it is as well to go without as to wear. That is different. The angel laughed till she was close to tears, and said we were far nicer maids than the one her mother had sent on by railway train in starting by automobile. After this, she would be spoiled for others; and she gave us each one a present. Lola, two wondrous hatpins with blue stones in silver—not that she would ever suffer the tortures of a hat, but it is a great thing to have them. Teresa, a sweet round purse[pg 184]of blue leather, of the size to hold a five peseta piece; Micaela, a handkerchief with lace on the edge, and me an embroidered veil like a gossamer. What did we care that Her Majesty the mother would have sent us away if she could? She had not enough Spanish to make us understand what we did not wish to understand, and at last she saved her breath for another day. But by that time we had finished, for we had put our angel into her night-dress, a thing of cobwebs and lace kept together by blue ribbons, which I should have thought good enough for a queen to wear when mounting her throne.”“You must show us your presents,”said I, with deliberate cunning. All were displayed on the instant, with chattering, laughing, and clamourous claims for rival merits. But the veil was the thing which I looked on to covet. She had worn it one day after rain, when the roads had been clear of dust, and her face had gleamed through the lace as a star gleams through a floating cloud-film. I felt that I could not see it in other hands than mine.While the Cherub compared the gifts with eloquence, I drew Mariquita apart.“I want that veil very much,”said I;“so much that I'll give you a hundred pesetas if you'll part with it.”She opened her tobacco-brown eyes.“But the señor is only a man, and cannot know that the bit of embroidered net is worth no more, in money, than fifteen pesetas at most.”“It wasn't its money-worth I was thinking about.”“A—ah, I see! The señorito—yes, of course, it would be strange if he did not! I love my new veil, not only because it is pretty, but more because it came to me from the most beautiful señorita I have ever seen. Still, since the señorito will value it even more than I can, I will give it to him, though not for the hundred pesetas. I will give it for nothing except his thanks.”I told the girl she was too good; that I could not rob her of the gift just made; but she insisted, and I saw that her pride would be hurt if I refused. So I accepted, while a way of benefitting myself and rewarding her occurred to my mind.[pg 185]“You see how it is with me.”I said, with a confidential air.“You have been very generous. Will you be helpful too?”“You may trust me,”she answered.“I love a love affair, especially if there is difficulty. I shall have an acknowledgednoviomyself soon, I hope. He is a bull-fighter—only a beginner, but he will be great one day, and though my father made a long face at first, now he shrugs his shoulders; and when that is done, there is always hope. Her Majesty the mother makes the long face, does she not?”I nodded.“She will shrug the shoulders by and by.”“I doubt it. But meanwhile, I've written a letter. Will you try to give it to the young lady?”“Yes,”said Mariquita.“I will try my best. I think I can do it. Not to-night, for she has gone to bed, and there would be no excuse to get back to her room, since I must pass through Her Majesty's. But to-morrow morning I will take the ladies' hot water, with oh, such an innocent face! And I will take the letter too.”“Thank you many times,”said I.“The thing isn't done yet.”“It's for your goodwill I thank you in advance. And this is for your bull-fighter, as a present from hisnovia.”I took out my scarf-pin. Her face flushed with pleasure, as it would have flushed for no sum of money. She might have waived away a present for herself, but she could not resist one for thenovio, and I was thanked far beyond the gift's merit.If she went to bed happy, so did I, for I believed that Monica would have my letter in the morning; and if the wistfulness in her eyes meant some new trouble in which I had a part, I hoped that the words I had written might banish it.[pg 186]XXIVThe Goodwill of MariquitaNevertheless I could not sleep on my hard but clean pillows, for wondering about that look of Monica's, and its meaning; and whenever I shut my eyes, hordes of red and yellow figures poured out of white houses upon white roads, forming irritating, kaleidoscopic patterns on my tired retina.Each hour that passed was cried by the watchman, far away, and then close under my window; a fearsome cry like a groan of agony uttered by a madman in a dying spasm.I was glad when morning came; and after such a bath as two or three miniature jugs of water afforded (the deer-eyed boy wondered in the name of all the saints what I could do with so many), I threw off the brain-clouds of a sleepless night.Before long Monica would have my letter. She would know—if she could have doubted—that if I had loved her at first, I worshipped her now. She would know why we had not followed more closely yesterday; and why—unless Carmona chose to accept our help again—we would go on before the grey car to-day. She would know also that my most earnest hope was to take her away, out of the reach of harm.I was dressed, and had had my coffee and hard, fat roll of Spanish bread, by half-past seven, as I was sure Ropes would be wanting to see me. I would not have disturbed Dick, who slept in a room across thepatio, but I found him in the dining-room, wrestling with a glass of thick chocolate and a finger-shaped sweet biscuit.“I'm trying to like Spanish customs,”said he.[pg 187]I laughed.“Because, if I'm going to carry through that scheme of mine about motor traffic, I may have to live on the spot, you see.”“Oh!”said I.“And what about Colonel O'Donnel's copper mines? Have you thought of a means to persuade him it's his duty to have them worked?”“In a way, I have,”Dick answered dryly.“An indirect sort of way. What about our gasoline? Heard anything about it?”“No. I'm going to find Ropes.”“Rather a sell for Carmona, if he did order ourbidonspricked, to feel it's his fault if we're held up as long as he is.”“There's Ropes in thepatio,”I said.“I'll go and interview him.”“What news?”I asked.“Well, sir, I did what the landlord said last night, and had a try for moto-naphtha—as they call it here—at the chemist's.”“Did they have any?”“Oh yes, sir, they had some. As much as a pint apiece, in the two shops. They wanted to sell it by the ounce.”Dick and I laughed, though my mirth was not care-free. I had visions of being stuck at this place until Ropes made a journey to Madrid and back, Carmona's car slipping away long before we were ready.“I was afraid it was hopeless to look for petrol here,”I said, striving for resignation, even though I saw Mariquita going upstairs with two battered tins of hot water.“Not yet, sir. A man who heard me asking for moto-naphtha at the chemist's, advised me to try the cemetery.”“The cemetery? You misunderstood the word.”“No, sir; itwascemetery. And what's more, he said the Mayor keeps it there to kill lobsters.”This statement, delivered somewhat nervously, was received with derision.“The fellow was stuffing you,”said Dick.“I don't think so, sir.”[pg 188]“Then he's mad,”I insisted.“Fishing for lobsters with moto-naphtha in a cemetery at Manzanares is a story Baron Munchausen would have thought twice about before telling.”“Langostasdoes meanlangouste—or lobsters, I suppose, sir?”asked Ropes.“Ye—es,”I answered thoughtfully. Then lightning flashed across the darkness of my mind.“It means locusts as well,”said I.“They use petrol to kill locusts, and for some reason best known to themselves keep it at the cemetery. We'll go, Ropes, and persuade them to sell us more than an ounce.”“Right, sir. At once?”“In a moment,”said I.Mariquita, empty-handed, was coming downstairs. I waylaid her, under that portion of the balcony hidden from the window of Lady Vale-Avon's room.“Did you deliver the letter?”I asked.“Yes, señor.”“To the young lady herself?”“To herself. But I must tell you what worries me, señor. As I was leaving the outer room, I heard a sound like a cry of distress, from the inner room. I looked back, and Her Majesty the mother had gone in. That is all I know. I could do nothing, whatever had happened, and I felt it would be well to escape before I could be questioned.”“What do you think happened?”“How can I tell, señor? Unless the terrible lady snatched your letter from the angel.”“At least, I hope the angel had had time to read it.”“I do not know, señorito. There was not much time; but she might have been quick; and if the letter was not long, there is still hope.”This was poor comfort. All my joyous anticipations dashed, I tried to think of some way of finding out whether Monica had read my letter, and whether there were any way of smuggling another to her.[pg 189]The note had been written in such haste, that I scarcely knew what I had said. No name had been signed; nevertheless, if Lady Vale-Avon read what I had written, she would say to herself,“It is not Cristóbal O'Donnel who says these things, but a more dangerous man.”If she had the letter, she could show it to Carmona; but, as I thought the matter over, I decided that it was unlikely she would do this.Spaniards, especially Spaniards with Moorish blood in their veins, do not like to think girls they love capable of carrying on secret correspondence with other men; and I imagined that Lady Vale-Avon was a woman to guess this. Already Carmona knew that Lady Monica was interested in someone else, or had a girlish fancy for him, which might or might not have been frightened away. But his desire for her would not be whetted by the fact that she was receiving letters from that someone else, perhaps sending them to him; and it struck me that Lady Vale-Avon would conceal the correspondence, rather than flaunt it in Carmona's face. If I were right, then I was as safe as before from the Duke'sjealousy; but, had Monica read my letter?On the alert as her mother would be now, I should find it more difficult than ever to communicate with the girl. Yet I could not bear to leave Manzanares in fear of a misunderstanding.Nothing more could be done at the moment, however; and I hurried Ropes off that we might finish our errand and get back by the time that Monica was down.It appeared that the man who had volunteered information about moto-naphtha was waiting to act as guide. He was still at the chemist's, and from there led us to the Casa Consistorial. At the Casa Consistorial were two policemen in the hall, warming themselves over a hole in the ground, where glowed charcoal embers. But the Mayor had not arrived. Without him nothing could be arranged. Besides, even if he were present and willing to consent, the key of the cemetery was with thecura, who might be anywhere.Off we dashed to thecura'shouse, and just in time. Five[pg 190]minutes later, and we might have had to wait hours for him. But there he was, a delightful, white-haired old man, who would be charmed to open the cemetery for our worships, since it was not to bury us; but he could make no move in that direction without the honourable concurrence of the Mayor.Back, then, we bustled to the Casa Consistorial, with the sensation of shuttlecocks, played between battledores at cross purposes.But at last the second battledore was ready to send us in the right direction. The Mayor, a young man, who looked like a lawyer in tall hat and frock-coat, was as polite as only a Spaniard can be. He put himself, and his house, and Manzanares at our service. It was something like being given the freedom of London; and what was more to the point than anything else, he offered us as much moto-naphtha as the town possessed, at any price we pleased to pay.The question was, how much did the town possess; a single quart, or a hundred gallons? The Mayor himself was not sure, so we rattled off in an ancient“simón”to the cemetery to find out; and luckily were able to carry away all we were likely to need for the next two days, while leaving some for the locusts. But between the Casa Consistorial, the house of thecura, the distant cemetery, and the drive back to our stable-garage, it had taken us nearly three hours to achieve our end. Then there was a little lingering with the car, to make sure that all was well and no more tricks had been played; and the walk back to thefondaexhausted the last of my patience. I had not expected to be gone more than an hour, and I had been gone three. Meanwhile, I said to myself, almost anything might have happened. My idea had been to get back by the time that Monica was dressed, and now, for all I could tell, she might have gone.Dick laughed at this suggestion, for, said he, Carmona's chauffeur was not a worker of miracles except, perhaps, on other men's cars; and he could not have got his master's in order and ready to start. His arguments were reasonable; nevertheless, like many[pg 191]other plausible deductions, they were wrong; for the first news we heard at the hotel was that the grey automobile had left nearly an hour before. The chauffeur, it seemed, had been up all night working, and had had assistance in the early morning at a machine-shop. The injuries had been patched up, and the car was expected to get on either to Andujar, or Linares if a certain bridge had been finished.After all, this was not as bad as if we had made no promise to the Duchess. We were bound not to lie in wait for, or closely follow, her son's car; and had it not been for the“luck of the Dream-Book,”Carmona and his party would have been far away last night when we arrived at Manzanares. Had I not been tortured by doubts about the fate of my letter, I might have been philosopher enough to say:“Patience, until Seville!”As it was, patience was the last virtue I could cultivate; and for what remained of that day, I was unable to find the smallest pleasure in motoring.Again we were on the highroad between Madrid and Seville; yet the waving ruts and ridges of hardened mud were sprinkled with a green glaze of grass, as if in treacherous attempt at concealment. Dust curled behind us like smoke, creeping under the tarpaulin that covered our luggage on the roof, and into our suit-cases, powdering our clothing like fine white sugar.Despite the good springs and deep cushions of the car, Pilar's light body danced up and down, as Dick said, like a bit of American popcorn over a hot fire; and our two guests, who had thought themselves motor enthusiasts, did not respond ardently to Dick's forced praises of the sport.How glorious, said he (every other word emphasized with a bump), how glorious not to be bound down to the fixed and inconvenient hours of trains. To stop where and when you like; to start on again when you choose; never to have your view of the choicest bit of scenery blotted out in a tunnel; to be grimed by no railway smoke; always to feel your face fanned by a fresh breeze, tingling with ozone; to read—if you had the seeing eye—the[pg 192]whole life of the country in writing on the road; the tracks of heavy carts; the delicate prints of donkey's feet, trotting to market laden with wine or fruit; the tracing of diligence wheels, or old-fashioned carriages on their way to a bull-fight; the footmarks of peasants economically carrying their shoes over their shoulders; the clover-like imprint of sheeps' little hoofs, and goats'; the pads of shepherd dogs. To flash through kinematographic glimpses of vineland and oliveland, and graceful blue mountain shapes; to see strange villages of whose existence you would never know when plodding along by train; to fly from one living reminder of Don Quixote to another, as we were doing to-day (had we not seen the inn where he was knighted?)—Bang! Never before can I remember hailing with delight the pistol-like report which can mean but one thing; the bursting of a tyre. But I was enchanted that Dick's eloquence should be interrupted.We had jolted through wine-makingValdepeñas, where the red juice of the grape seems to spout from a grey valley of stones; we had passed, in the quaint market-place, the posada which Don Quixote knew; we had bounced through Santa Cruz de Mudela, with its fine old fifteenth century church, and had seen its famous and gaily coloured garters exposed for sale in the shops; and now we were far from towns or villages, out in the country.Luckily, everybody was ready for lunch, and Pilar and the Cherub had had the forethought to order things which would not have occurred to Dick or me. Not far away, on the crest of a hill-billow, stood a road-mender's house, with an outside, adobe oven like a huge beehive. We crawled to it, travelling on the collapsed tyre, and were served by a delightful brown family; served as if we had been the King and his suite who had lunched (so said the brown family) on that spot a few weeks ago. Out came the chairs which the King and his friends had sat in, plates and glasses from which the King and his friends had drunk; and the simple people derived a childlike pleasure from dwelling on the episode.[pg 193]As before, the news of our presence seemed to flash through the air and bring, in the same mysterious way, an audience out of empty space. Pilar said that the people who came were in reality wild birds, seen by our sophisticated eyes in the form of human beings; and as if they had been wild birds, we coaxed them, till they trusted us and fed with us, drinking from our wineskin the blood of the Spanish grape, almost innocent of alcohol. The soft Spanish language, as it fell from their lips, was rich as the taste of that Spanish wine on the tongue, and stirred in my heart a pride of kinsmanship.While we others lunched, Ropes jacked up the Gloria and changed the inner tube, pausing now and then to munch a sandwich or swallow a draught of wine with an unruffled air characteristic of him. When the road-mender mentioned that fourbandidoshad been captured in the morning by the civil guard, on the road along which we had passed, his expression did not change by the twitching of a muscle. Indeed, he looked equal to disposing of half a dozen brigands without the aid of a single guardia civile.After forty minutes by the wayside, we set off to penetrate farther into that melancholy country which Cervantes loved, and almost at once were in the Venta de Cordeñas, that wide and stony waste where Don Quixote rode to do his penance. The gayest spirits must have been dashed by the gloom of the knight's self-imposed prison, and mine were not improved. I had a disquieting impression that Monica's voice, calling an appeal, came echoing from the mountain walls.Of course, there was nothing in it, except superstitious nonsense of which I ought to be ashamed; yet I could not shut my ears to her voice, which seemed to cry the words her fingers once had written:“Don't desert me! Don't leave me alone!”Always the echo followed, as the car mounted higher on the slopes of the Sierra Morena, and such glories of Spain opened out before our eyes as we had not seen yet, even in the splendid Gorge of Pancorbo.[pg 194]Crest above crest, great chains of mountains cut the smooth sapphire of the sky; and as we serpentined into their closer grasp, each loop of the Alpine road gave a new and more fantastic combination of rock and stream. The car was boring into a gorge of astounding sublimity, a hammer-stroke of Vulcan which had cleft the mountain and left behind chips of copper, of gold, of silver, and a rich sprinkling of precious gems.As the god's hammer fell, out of the ruin it made were shaped marvels of form; Olympian castles and giant statues, images of such savage creatures as roamed devastating the earth in days when man was in his childhood.Even the calm countenance of Ropes was transfigured by this burst of splendour.“Makes you forget that roads can be bad, and tyres go wrong, doesn't it, sir?”he said to me.“I could drive through places like these, day and night on end, without food or drink, never knowing if I was done up.”And praise from a chauffeur is praise indeed!We were in the defile of Despeñaperros, the most terrific and, at the same time, the noblest gorge of Spain; and I should have known it from stories told by my father, who had once fought withbandolerosupon this very road. Down into the river that tossed up white plumes of foam far below, he had flung one man, while another fired shot after shot from his carbine, screened behind a rock on the opposite side of the ravine, scarcely a biscuit-throw away.Long before, too, history had been made in this mountain passage whose walls had rung with wilder sounds than the screaming of our siren. The rival battle-cries of Moor and Spaniard had echoed among the rocks, and Christian blood and pagan had mingled in the white spume of the river.I thought of these things, as I looked down into the silent depths of the gulf, and saw the sparkling veins of granite, and purple masses of slate gleam with volcanic life and colour. But still I heard the haunting echo of Monica's voice, in the solitude[pg 195]through which she must lately have passed, perhaps leaving some message, if I could only know.Was it merely a fantastic twist of my nerves, or was her spirit calling, trying to make itself heard and understood?It was Pilar who broke the spell by a sudden clapping of her hands.“Andalucía! dear Andalucía!”she cried; and each one of us, subdued and silenced by the majesty of the scene, started as if waking from sleep.She was pointing at a stone obelisk, looking at which her father smiled and raised his hat.“No more cold,”said he;“no more winds to nip our noses. Here's the dividing line between the north countries and the country of the sun.”Then, as if the obelisk had been the finger of some genie invoking a magic change, an enchantment blurred the stem features of the landscape. It was as though the fierce face of an angry giant had been transformed into that of a beautiful, laughing woman with the sun in her eyes.The defile opened when we had slipped past a half-hidden mountain hamlet or two; widened into a valley bright with colour as the jewels on the spread tail of a peacock; and boat-like, the car rode an undulating sea of green and azure and gold, that scintillated as if a spray of diamonds were tossed into air with the speed of our going.At Santa Elena we were in a Spain I had not seen. At La Carolina we burst into a world fair and fertile as the Garden of Eden; and I remembered the Moorish legend that Heaven is built on the blue that hangs over Andalucía.Hedges of aloe brandished zincen swords and darts; cacti sprawled and leered along the roadside; set in the vivid green of ripening grain, olive groves seemed carved from jade; or the bare rosy shoulders of sloping hillsides turned by contrast their pale tints to tarnished silver. Vines with young gold leaves trailed the purple earth; avenues of acacias dripped perfumes; and as the sun leaned towards the west, the quivering pink light on violet[pg 196]mountains gave to Andalucía the vivid, almost violent colouring one sees in sensational posters.Each girl we passed wore a bright flower shining star-like through the black cloud of her hair. The men had discarded the fur-trimmed Louis XI caps for the broad-brimmed, grey sombreros de Cordoba, and the horses or mules were harnessed with gay splashes of red and blue colour, and bobbing tassels.We had talked of Linares, the lead-mining town, as a halting-place for the night, as we were pledged not to track down the Lecomte; and on the outskirts of Bailen, as twilight fell, the Gloria was brought to a sudden stop in the midst of a pulsating crowd, that we might ask the way.If we aroused their curiosity, they piqued us to the same emotion, for most of the men, and there were hundreds, not only wore upon their legs a kind of divided pinafore, but carried on their backs an apparatus which would have excited wonder in any other than this fairy country.The machine reminded me at first glance of a fire-extinguisher; then of some appliance used by miners to hold a supply of oxygen. One part of me wished to know what the instrument was; the other preferred to remain in ignorance, lest the explanation should prove too commonplace. But Waring had all my curiosity, and none of my scruples; so he asked a question with a gesture more intelligible than his Spanish; and just as I had feared, the weird union of reservoirs and nozzles was no more than a contrivance for spraying vines to protect them from phylloxera.As always, we brought the fascinations of the Cherub to bear upon the crowd, as one trains the latest gun upon the enemy; and his crooning brought out facts which made Dick think it high time he got things into shape, and his motor service to running. It seemed that once upon a time a good road had been made from Bailen to Linares, but the road was crossed by a river; and when the masonry supports for a bridge had been built, it turned out that girders had been forgotten. Somehow, it was nobody's place to jog anybody else's memory, and there the matter had[pg 197]ended, so long ago that grass and flowers had sprouted among the futile stones.It appeared the most natural thing in the world to the people of Bailen, who were accustomed to ford the river, when they wanted to cross, with horses; but though the weather had been dry for the last few days, the recent torrents which had fallen in the mountains, still swelled the volume of water to such a height that it might“put out the fire in the automobile.”I was glad to hear this, because if it would put out our fire, it would put out Carmona's; and as he was prudent in matters concerning his car, he would probably have stopped at Andujar; thus fate would again bring me near to Monica, despite our promise.The main reason for going to Linares was because the Cherub believed there was a fair hotel, built to accommodate Englishmen collected for the lead-mining; therefore it was without regret that we turned the Gloria to follow thecarreterato Cordoba.Our advisers ran after us with a warning to avoid the rough cobbles of Bailen by taking therondawhich skirts the town on its left. So slowly, in dusk that blossomed blue as the myrtle flower, we passed round outside the town, regained the high road, leaping at speed into a world of wide, silvery spaces and mystery of violet hollows, diving into the deep valley of the swollen river, and rejoicing in a hard surface of good macadam for fifteen miles or more.Thus we arrived at Andujar, the lights of our great acetylene lamps (lit before the sky turned from opal to amethyst) prying into dark doorways and windows as Röntgen rays pry through flesh to bone.In the white glare, pretty girls in doorways looked like actresses in a costume play, waiting in the wings to“go on.”But no yells of a stage mob ever were so realistic as those of the unrehearsed band who howled over my poor Gloria as she deposited her passengers at thefonda; and Ropes and I pushed her through a wall of human beings to a stable-garage, where her[pg 198]flywheel gushed a protest of fiery sparks on the high stone step of entrance.Thefondawas passable; but Carmona and his party were not there; neither were they anywhere else in Andujar, as we made it our business to discover; and we guessed that the grey car must after all have ventured to Linares.As it had vanished, we were free to start when we chose next morning. So we chose an early hour, flying over good roads through a land embroidered with the scarlet of poppies, the blue of gentian, the pink of clover, and gold of buttercups, stitched in with the silver of little running streams.“‘Give us bread and give us bulls,’is the cry of this country,”said the Cherub, greeting with joyous glances each feature of his loved Andalucia.“It sounds like a beef sandwich,”Dick reflected aloud; but Pilar reproached him for flippancy.“You mustn't make jokes about bread in Andalucia!”she exclaimed.“And it's called a sin ever to throw away a crumb. Because it's the gift of Heaven, if you drop a bit you must pick it up and apologize by kissing it.”“Why not eat it instead?”asked Dick.“You can do that afterwards. And if bread's made with holes in it, you must stand the holey side up, because the spirit of God enters through the holes to bless you.”“I thought only olives were sacred in Andalucia,”said Dick, staring away over enormous tracts of the silver-grey trees growing out of copper soil, waving as far as the eye could follow, to the floating line of ethereal blue mountains.“They're sacred, too,”assented Pilar.“Did you know, in the old days they used to be sold only for gold, gold carried on mule back in great bags, and exchanged on the spot, for the trees—so many for so much? We have olives at our place, and they're gathered in such a nice old-fashioned way; papa doesn't care for new ways, even if they make a little more money. It's pretty to watch. I should like you to see it, only—Señor Waring doesn't like old-fashioned things.”[pg 199]“I like making the‘little more money,’I'm afraid,”Dick confessed.“Sometimes I like money too—when I want to buy anything. At other times I don't care. Lately I've been saving up. I've got one thousand nine hundred pesetas.”“Good gracious!”laughed Dick,“are you going to buy a bull-farm with such a gigantic sum?”“Funny you should have said that. I'm going to buy one bull. He's the only possession of the Duke of Carmona's that I want, and I want him so much that I've sacrificed oh,—I can't remember how many Paris hats, and shoes, and silk petticoats, and pretty dresses to get him, withallmy own money! The worst of it is, he'llneverknow about the hats and things.”Dick was looking interested now.“What in the name of goodness will you do with him when you get him?”he inquired.“Save him,”said the girl.“From what?”“From the bull-ring. Oh, he's atoro bravo, is Vivillo, a heart of gold. Not the most famoustoreroin Spain shall pierce it. I've loved him for four years, since he was a baby at his mother's side, and Rafael Calmenare used to take me to visit him; loved him better even than Corcito, and all this time I've been saving up to buy him before he's of the age for acorrida. Now I've enough, or nearly, and there aren't many weeks to waste, for soon he'll be five; and already he has the strength and courage of three bulls, my Vivillo! I long to see him again—long for the day when I can put my arms round his great neck, and say,‘Hermanito, you're mine!’”“Your arms round his neck!”gasped Dick.“A fighting bull! You're joking. Say you mean an Irish bull, and put me out of misery.”“He's a true Spanish grandee of a bull, and my arms have been round his neck often,”said Pilarcita.“Then he can't be very fierce.”[pg 200]“He can be terrible. He has nearly killed two men—strangers who teased him, so he meant no harm, poor darling! and they daren't let any except black horses come near him. No Muira bull is more savage than he if he's roused. You know, the Duke of Carmona's bulls are as celebrated as the Muiras themselves. But Vivillo has always loved me, and one or two others—me best, though—and he'll eat out of my hand, the great brown velvet beast, like a kitten.”“How long since he's seen you?”asked Dick.“Six weeks.”“I wouldn't trust his memory.”“I trust it as I would my brother's. You shall see me petting him.”“Great Scott! you won't let her risk her life with this wild beast, will you, Colonel O'Donnel?”Dick cried out.But the Cherub smiled his placid smile.“Don Cipriano calls her Una, because she can tame wild beasts,”said he.Dick's face became almost too expressive. If he did not want Pilar's eyes to read his every emotion, I thought he would be wiser to put on his motor-mask.

[pg 174]XXIIIThe Glorification of MonicaSlowing up, we were almost upon the group; and for once we were welcome to our enemies. Even Carmona's face brightened, a flicker of hope lit Lady Vale-Avon's grey eyes; and the Duchess deliberately courted us with a smile.As for Monica, she was radiant as a child who has been surprised by the home-coming of loved ones; yet there was a new wistfulness in her eyes, despite the joy she showed.“Oh, how glorious that you've come to the rescue!”she cried, all dimples and roses. Still, she looked from me to Pilar, and from Pilar to me, as if she longed to ask one or the other some question which it was impossible to speak; and I said to myself that it would go hard with me if I did not find out before I was many hours older, what that question was.Any port is welcome in a storm or among fellow-motorists, if you are helpless by the roadside with several ladies when night is coming on; and Carmona's first words showed that he had no scruple in making use of us. But with the trials he had gone through, and his natural preference for the help of any other car rather than the hated Gloria, he was in a black mood. He wished to be civil, lest we should be goaded into leaving him in the lurch; yet it was plainly such an effort that I could have laughed aloud. Pilar would have been able to quote paragraph and page of her Dream-Book.The worst damage to the car was a broken spring, though something seemed to have gone wrong also with the ignition in[pg 175]that disastrous bump into thecaniveau. They had been where we found them for a couple of hours, Carmona admitted, without encountering any vehicle or animal to give them a tow. The first hope had been to stagger on to Manzanares (which originally they had meant to pass) with a broken spring; but the bee in the motor's bonnet could not be made to buzz, and in despair, Carmona had been about to send his chauffeur on foot, in search of some conveyance for the ladies and their luggage. More hours must have passed, at best, before the man could have returned to the rescue, and already everybody was hungry.The ladies of the Duke's party had to be transferred to the Gloria; and Dick, with airs of ownership, urged vague and voluble reasons why I should be their companion in the tonneau. We were the masters of the situation, and Carmona's face, as he was obliged to take his seat beside the chauffeur who must steer the car in tow, repaid me for grievous wrongs.Pilar, not to be outdone in ingenuity by Dick, did for me what I could not do for myself, in contriving that I should sit next to Monica. Though I could say nothing for her ears which other ears might not hear, it was a joy to feel her slight shoulder nestling warm against my arm, to know that she could not be snatched from me by her mother or Carmona, but that as it was now, so it must be for many moments, perhaps an hour, to come. There was also satisfaction to be got from the fact that my enemy, bumping on behind in his own disabled car (propelled by our generosity and power), was glaring with malice, envy, and all uncharitableness at my back.My one regret in these moments which should have been perfect, was that my prophetic soul hadn't caused me to write a long letter to Monica, which I might have been able to slip into her hand under cover of rugs and darkness.Ropes had to light the lamps before we saw more of Manzanares than an illusive church spire which kept appearing and disappearing like a will-o'-the-wisp. But the petrol held out, and[pg 176]the Gloria's breathing was regular, despite the weight she had to tow over ruts and across gutters. Once, however, Ropes looked back at me with an expressive movement of the shoulders which I interpreted as,“we're lucky if we get there!”so I could have shouted“hurrah!”at sight of the first houses, though they brought my last moment of happiness.Another instant, and the population of Manzanares was answering to the thrum of our motor, as soldiers to the call of the drum. From somewhere, their saints alone knew where, an army of children poured into the long straight street, and as we slowed to avoid wholesale murder, they took advantage of our consideration to swarm up the car like ants. They ran shouting beside us, climbed on to the steps, hung on behind, fighting so ruthlessly for choice positions that they all but fell under the wheels. One would not have supposed there could be other children left in Spain. How there could be room for these in the town of Manzanares was a wonder; how they could all have turned out on the second in their thousands, was a miracle; and their promptness would have done credit to any commander.The shrill cries of this legion, drowning the sound of the motor, and increasing as the contingent was swelled from each side street, roused the town. Families left their tables and rushed to the door, their supper in their hands. Bakers with white arms left to-morrow's bread in the troughs; a group of farriers shoeing a horse stopped work, until the glowing iron paled. Shopkeepers who had lighted their windows with a blaze of electricity, ran into the street. Mules and donkeys tied to doorposts shared the general excitement, plunged and reared before the advance of the human breaker with the car on its crest snapped their cords, and dashed into their master's houses.Never, among all our successes, had we made such asuccés fouas this; but then, never before had we had a car in tow. Half our triumph belonged to the Lecomte; yet either of us would gladly have dispensed with all; and had it not been for a small but determined policeman who struggled to preserve the[pg 177]credit of the town, we might have been half the night fighting our way to an hotel.He dealt blows and exhortations indiscriminately, piloted us through side streets which it would never have occurred to our imagination to enter, and with exertions worthy of him who“singly kept the bridge,”helped us make a lane for the ladies to dart into the door of the littlefonda.It was an iron door of elaborate openwork, leading, Moorish fashion, through a shallow vestibule into apatio—the first we had seen on our way south; and if it had not been slammed shut with a loud click, by some person inside, half Manzanares would have poured after the fugitives.Assured of the ladies' safety, the men of the two (outwardly) united parties remained to help the chauffeurs and a bewildered landlord to take down luggage. Overwhelmed by a wave of halfgrown children and a thick spray of babies, Carmona's man lost his presence of mind. The two cars had hardly stopped before the little creatures were in them, and on them, and under them, trying to pinch the tyres, blowing the horn, squalling, laughing, crying.“Mon Dieu, c'est un obsession!”wailed the unfortunate Frenchman; and even the imperturbable Ropes showed signs of“nerves.”As fast as the thronging goblins were beaten off, they were up again in redoubled force; but so merry they were, and so handsome was each bold brown face, with its dazzling eyes, that it was impossible to be angry. Somehow, we rescued the luggage, and with the aid of the landlord pitched, or slid, or rolled it through the door, momentarily opened.“For Heaven's sake, sir, see me through this!”implored Ropes, noticing that the men of the party were on the point of following the luggage.“Hate to trouble you, but I don't think my Spanish will run to it.”In pity I climbed into the car to go with him to the stable which the landlord indicated as our garage. It was an experience to be remembered in nightmares; yet there was in it a sort of schoolboy pleasure. We seemed to have done[pg 178]battle against the whole force of the army out against us; nevertheless when we returned to thefonda, swept along by a large bodyguard, we found a regiment assembled round the door. How we got through was food for another wild dream, but we did get through, to stand panting on the other side of the grating, in thepatio.Dozens of dark faces were pressed against the bars, like tier above tier of glowing pansies in a flower-bed; and we knew at last the sensation of those who are the observed, not the observers, in a menagerie.Everyone was in thepatio, where electric lights hanging from the balconies mingled with rich yellow lamplight and ruddy firelight streaming from the kitchen. All the luggage was piled anyhow, in a chaotic heap surging with suit-cases, boiling with dressing-bags; while near by, like Marius and a friend or two at the ruins of Carthage, stood the Duchess, Lady Vale-Avon, Carmona, Dick, and the Cherub. Monica and Pilar had been talking at a distance with a young girl of the house, but seeing me gravitate in their direction, Lady Vale-Avon called her daughter.“The ladies are saying they can't stay here,”announced Dick,his voice in sympathy with a twinkle in his eyes.“I'm not saying so,”cut in Monica.“I think it will be fun; a real adventure. The landlady's wonderful, and all her daughters and nieces beauties. If we're nice to them, they'll be adorable to us.”“The place is a den!”exclaimed Lady Vale-Avon.“There must be something better in the town.”“I'm afraid there isn't,”said the Duke.“This accident has made me helpless. I'm horribly sorry; but we can't get on anywhere else to-night.”“We can sit up,”said the Duchess,“in the automobile.”“Do let's look at the rooms,”begged Monica.“And don't let them see we're finding fault. Their feelings will be hurt.”“What nonsense!”replied Lady Vale-Avon.“As if they had feelings!”[pg 179]“If you don't consider them, they won't take pains to make you comfortable,”I said, knowing by instinct the people with whom we had to deal.“They're beginning to suspect already that something's wrong, and judging from the expression of their faces it will take only a little more for the landlord to say he has no rooms. Then we really may have to sit in the automobiles.”The keeper of thefondaand his family, who had come so warmly to welcome the strangers, were now hovering aloof, silent and suspicious, their spirits dashed by the contemptuous looks of Lady Vale-Avon and the Duchess. Standing in semi-darkness, the landlord's face was a blur of brown shadow, featureless, save for a pair of enormous eyes burning with an emotion which was no longer hospitality. His wife, whose broad shoulder was pressed against her husband's as if to form a line of defence, was a dark-browed, gypsy-like woman, who must once have been beautiful, and might now be formidable. Behind them were grouped a handsome boy, and three or four extraordinarily pretty girls with red and white roses in their hair.“They wouldn't dare turn us out!”exclaimed Lady Vale-Avon.“They can never have had persons of our sort before.”“If you asked, they'd probably retort that Dukes and Marquesses were thick as blackberries,”said I.She glanced at Carmona, hoping for support, but he shrugged his shoulders in despair; and a look from me was a signal for the Cherub to step forward.The atmosphere had begun to tingle, and in a few moments more it might have been too late to make peace with these proud and self-respecting people, who had never submitted to indignity. But in the space of six seconds the magnetism of the Cherub had begun to do its work. He murmured, nodded, and smiled, took the family into his confidence with a few graphic gestures, explained that the ladies were upset by an accident, appealed to the landlord's chivalry, and the landlady's heart. Gathering frowns were chased away by smiles; and when Monica showed[pg 180]her dimples to the boy and girls with a look which pleaded for kindness, the battle was fought and won.They had not many bedrooms. Several were engaged bycommercialtravellers, but these gentlemen should be stowed into one room, their clothing and luggage moved at once. Oh, they would not object when they learned that it was a question of accommodating ladies; or if they did, they must eat their objections for supper; it was no matter. And the landlord and landlady would give up their room, a good one, their worships need have no fear. All should be ready in the opening and closing of an eye. But would we meanwhile have supper? There was always enough for a few unexpected ones.Having listened so far, the Cherub turned blandly to Carmona. These arrangements need not include the Señor Duque's party, unless he liked, of course, but—his palms were extended as if to receive the decision. Plump it fell into them. Everyone must stay, and make the best of it.So the ladies were bundled into a room where they might get rid of the dust, and the men into another; clean rooms, with whitewashed walls, bare save for a pictured saint or two in lurid colours; floors covered with coarse, bright matting; and iron beds with lace-frilled and embroidered pillows.In a quarter of an hour everyone was ready for dinner, but five out of fifteen minutes I had given to the hasty scribbling of a pencilled note for Monica. I hoped to slip it into her hand in the dining-room, but she was closely under guard; and Carmona annexed four seats at the head of the long table, by which manœuvre he secured isolation for his party. It was safe from any sortie of ours, as there was a scattered contingent of commercial travellers already earnestly engaged in dining on either side of the table. Two polite men on the left, and three on the right, all with napkins tucked under their chins, rose, offering to move rather than divide friends; but Carmona assured them that the sacrifice was unnecessary. As they were all paralysed by Monica's beauty, of a type so different from any to which[pg 181]they were accustomed, they had not the self-command to protest; and as dinner went on (in many courses of which the landlord was evidently proud), they could scarcely do justice to theirmerluzaserved with grilled lemon and minced red Spanish pepper; theirtortillaof eggs, potatoes, peas, and ham; their pigeons with olives, or even their freshly baked maccaroni, for gazing languorously at the vision of pink and white and gold.Such charms as Pilar's, though unsurpassable of their kind, went for nothing with these ardent gentlemen; and even the landlord's son, daughters, and nieces who waited upon their guests, forgot half their duties in abject admiration.“An angel!”“a saint!”“a princess of fairyland!”were a few of their whispered adjectives; and when the object of their worship was snatched away by her mother and the Duchess, before the goats'-milk cheese had been brought round, a gloom fell upon the room. The commercial travellers galloped through the remainder of the meal, and went out, hoping perhaps, if they promenaded the street, to have the joy of seeing a light in the radiant being's window. The pretty girls of the household vanished with murmured excuses, leaving us at the mercy of the boy, who sighed grievously, dropped a sugar bowl, and spilled coffee within an ace of the Cherub's shoulder.Pilar presently disappeared also, leaving her three men alone at the table, observed only by a few dozen eager faces pressed against the iron bars protecting the open window.Soon we heard peals of laughter from thepatio; the pretty girls were sallying forth on a foraging expedition in search of a warming-pan to heat the beds of the three great ladies, who feared dampness. In twenty minutes they came back, and we arrived in thepatioin time to see the triumphal entrance of four or five charming creatures, bearing among them a long-handled brass vessel which had probably existed since the days of Philip the Second. But this was only the beginning of the fun; and we made an excuse of our cigarettes to linger, and hear what we could not see.[pg 182]It was not a beautifulpatio; and the public still surged outside the iron-grated door in the hope of further insight into the private lives of the travelling menagerie; but our luggage had been carried to the rooms which were now ready (thanks to the complaisance of the dazzled commercial gentlemen), and there were garden seats, on which we settled ourselves in spite of the chill in the evening air.From the rooms above we heard laughter and ecstatic cries. Evidently the warming-pan was making a sensation as it went its round, or something else had happened; and when at last the girls trooped downstairs from the balcony, I beckoned them to come our way. They skipped to us, wild with delight at the prospect of pouring out their hearts to an appreciative audience.The great warming-pan, stuffed with embers that glowed and paled, was laid on the tiled pavement while the girls wove themselves into a group, with interlacing arms.“Why are you so happy?”I asked“Happy? We have been in paradise, with the angels,”replied the prettiest girl with crimson roses stuck in a bank of copper hair.“There was but one angel,”objected her brunette cousin.“That is true. The two old ones think themselves everything, but they are less than nothing. I would not change my years for theirs, with their jewels and their quarterings. Thanks be to God, in our Spain, we are all as noble as the nobles, or at least in this province!”“You are also all beautiful!”said I.“That you can say so, señor, after seeing that wonder!”exclaimed the landlord's eldest daughter, a creature of carnation and flame.“Ah, the joy of it, we have been undressing her!”“If you could have seen her, with gold hair down to her knees!”gasped a gypsy of fifteen.“And when we had got her dress off, and she was in her—”“Hush, Micaela! it is not seemly that you should mention such garments in the presence ofseñores!”broke in the girl of the copper coronet."Now you are as bad as I was, Mariquita!"NOW YOU ARE AS BAD AS I WAS, MARIQUITA[pg 183]“But why, then, since they are most beautiful? You know well, Mariquita, you yourself said they were like the handwork of fairies, and her shoulders—”“Be silent, foolish one, or I shall have to burn your nose off with the warming-pan!”“And what did the elder ladies say to the young lady's new maids?”I asked quickly, as great eyes began to flash, and scarlet lips to pout.Back came the smiles, and the maidens fell into a fit of schoolgirl giggling.“There was but one Majesty there, praise be to the saints, the English one, who is no doubt the mother of our lady angel. They have two rooms between them, but that of the señorita is tiny, with no door of its own, and only a square glazed hole for a window, though the bed is as good as any, and we have given it the best linen. When we took in the warming-pan, our angel tried to say in Spanish that she was sure our beds were dry and well aired, as indeed they were. She had taken off her bodice, and was undoing her hair, which was so beautiful we could have fallen down and prayed to her as a saint. Then we could not resist, but began helping her to undress, talking about her beauty. She was not offended, though we kissed her hands, and that silly Micaela one of her tiny white feet when we had pulled off the stocking—”“Now you are as bad as I was, Mariquita.”“No, indeed; what is a stocking? A thing it is as well to go without as to wear. That is different. The angel laughed till she was close to tears, and said we were far nicer maids than the one her mother had sent on by railway train in starting by automobile. After this, she would be spoiled for others; and she gave us each one a present. Lola, two wondrous hatpins with blue stones in silver—not that she would ever suffer the tortures of a hat, but it is a great thing to have them. Teresa, a sweet round purse[pg 184]of blue leather, of the size to hold a five peseta piece; Micaela, a handkerchief with lace on the edge, and me an embroidered veil like a gossamer. What did we care that Her Majesty the mother would have sent us away if she could? She had not enough Spanish to make us understand what we did not wish to understand, and at last she saved her breath for another day. But by that time we had finished, for we had put our angel into her night-dress, a thing of cobwebs and lace kept together by blue ribbons, which I should have thought good enough for a queen to wear when mounting her throne.”“You must show us your presents,”said I, with deliberate cunning. All were displayed on the instant, with chattering, laughing, and clamourous claims for rival merits. But the veil was the thing which I looked on to covet. She had worn it one day after rain, when the roads had been clear of dust, and her face had gleamed through the lace as a star gleams through a floating cloud-film. I felt that I could not see it in other hands than mine.While the Cherub compared the gifts with eloquence, I drew Mariquita apart.“I want that veil very much,”said I;“so much that I'll give you a hundred pesetas if you'll part with it.”She opened her tobacco-brown eyes.“But the señor is only a man, and cannot know that the bit of embroidered net is worth no more, in money, than fifteen pesetas at most.”“It wasn't its money-worth I was thinking about.”“A—ah, I see! The señorito—yes, of course, it would be strange if he did not! I love my new veil, not only because it is pretty, but more because it came to me from the most beautiful señorita I have ever seen. Still, since the señorito will value it even more than I can, I will give it to him, though not for the hundred pesetas. I will give it for nothing except his thanks.”I told the girl she was too good; that I could not rob her of the gift just made; but she insisted, and I saw that her pride would be hurt if I refused. So I accepted, while a way of benefitting myself and rewarding her occurred to my mind.[pg 185]“You see how it is with me.”I said, with a confidential air.“You have been very generous. Will you be helpful too?”“You may trust me,”she answered.“I love a love affair, especially if there is difficulty. I shall have an acknowledgednoviomyself soon, I hope. He is a bull-fighter—only a beginner, but he will be great one day, and though my father made a long face at first, now he shrugs his shoulders; and when that is done, there is always hope. Her Majesty the mother makes the long face, does she not?”I nodded.“She will shrug the shoulders by and by.”“I doubt it. But meanwhile, I've written a letter. Will you try to give it to the young lady?”“Yes,”said Mariquita.“I will try my best. I think I can do it. Not to-night, for she has gone to bed, and there would be no excuse to get back to her room, since I must pass through Her Majesty's. But to-morrow morning I will take the ladies' hot water, with oh, such an innocent face! And I will take the letter too.”“Thank you many times,”said I.“The thing isn't done yet.”“It's for your goodwill I thank you in advance. And this is for your bull-fighter, as a present from hisnovia.”I took out my scarf-pin. Her face flushed with pleasure, as it would have flushed for no sum of money. She might have waived away a present for herself, but she could not resist one for thenovio, and I was thanked far beyond the gift's merit.If she went to bed happy, so did I, for I believed that Monica would have my letter in the morning; and if the wistfulness in her eyes meant some new trouble in which I had a part, I hoped that the words I had written might banish it.[pg 186]XXIVThe Goodwill of MariquitaNevertheless I could not sleep on my hard but clean pillows, for wondering about that look of Monica's, and its meaning; and whenever I shut my eyes, hordes of red and yellow figures poured out of white houses upon white roads, forming irritating, kaleidoscopic patterns on my tired retina.Each hour that passed was cried by the watchman, far away, and then close under my window; a fearsome cry like a groan of agony uttered by a madman in a dying spasm.I was glad when morning came; and after such a bath as two or three miniature jugs of water afforded (the deer-eyed boy wondered in the name of all the saints what I could do with so many), I threw off the brain-clouds of a sleepless night.Before long Monica would have my letter. She would know—if she could have doubted—that if I had loved her at first, I worshipped her now. She would know why we had not followed more closely yesterday; and why—unless Carmona chose to accept our help again—we would go on before the grey car to-day. She would know also that my most earnest hope was to take her away, out of the reach of harm.I was dressed, and had had my coffee and hard, fat roll of Spanish bread, by half-past seven, as I was sure Ropes would be wanting to see me. I would not have disturbed Dick, who slept in a room across thepatio, but I found him in the dining-room, wrestling with a glass of thick chocolate and a finger-shaped sweet biscuit.“I'm trying to like Spanish customs,”said he.[pg 187]I laughed.“Because, if I'm going to carry through that scheme of mine about motor traffic, I may have to live on the spot, you see.”“Oh!”said I.“And what about Colonel O'Donnel's copper mines? Have you thought of a means to persuade him it's his duty to have them worked?”“In a way, I have,”Dick answered dryly.“An indirect sort of way. What about our gasoline? Heard anything about it?”“No. I'm going to find Ropes.”“Rather a sell for Carmona, if he did order ourbidonspricked, to feel it's his fault if we're held up as long as he is.”“There's Ropes in thepatio,”I said.“I'll go and interview him.”“What news?”I asked.“Well, sir, I did what the landlord said last night, and had a try for moto-naphtha—as they call it here—at the chemist's.”“Did they have any?”“Oh yes, sir, they had some. As much as a pint apiece, in the two shops. They wanted to sell it by the ounce.”Dick and I laughed, though my mirth was not care-free. I had visions of being stuck at this place until Ropes made a journey to Madrid and back, Carmona's car slipping away long before we were ready.“I was afraid it was hopeless to look for petrol here,”I said, striving for resignation, even though I saw Mariquita going upstairs with two battered tins of hot water.“Not yet, sir. A man who heard me asking for moto-naphtha at the chemist's, advised me to try the cemetery.”“The cemetery? You misunderstood the word.”“No, sir; itwascemetery. And what's more, he said the Mayor keeps it there to kill lobsters.”This statement, delivered somewhat nervously, was received with derision.“The fellow was stuffing you,”said Dick.“I don't think so, sir.”[pg 188]“Then he's mad,”I insisted.“Fishing for lobsters with moto-naphtha in a cemetery at Manzanares is a story Baron Munchausen would have thought twice about before telling.”“Langostasdoes meanlangouste—or lobsters, I suppose, sir?”asked Ropes.“Ye—es,”I answered thoughtfully. Then lightning flashed across the darkness of my mind.“It means locusts as well,”said I.“They use petrol to kill locusts, and for some reason best known to themselves keep it at the cemetery. We'll go, Ropes, and persuade them to sell us more than an ounce.”“Right, sir. At once?”“In a moment,”said I.Mariquita, empty-handed, was coming downstairs. I waylaid her, under that portion of the balcony hidden from the window of Lady Vale-Avon's room.“Did you deliver the letter?”I asked.“Yes, señor.”“To the young lady herself?”“To herself. But I must tell you what worries me, señor. As I was leaving the outer room, I heard a sound like a cry of distress, from the inner room. I looked back, and Her Majesty the mother had gone in. That is all I know. I could do nothing, whatever had happened, and I felt it would be well to escape before I could be questioned.”“What do you think happened?”“How can I tell, señor? Unless the terrible lady snatched your letter from the angel.”“At least, I hope the angel had had time to read it.”“I do not know, señorito. There was not much time; but she might have been quick; and if the letter was not long, there is still hope.”This was poor comfort. All my joyous anticipations dashed, I tried to think of some way of finding out whether Monica had read my letter, and whether there were any way of smuggling another to her.[pg 189]The note had been written in such haste, that I scarcely knew what I had said. No name had been signed; nevertheless, if Lady Vale-Avon read what I had written, she would say to herself,“It is not Cristóbal O'Donnel who says these things, but a more dangerous man.”If she had the letter, she could show it to Carmona; but, as I thought the matter over, I decided that it was unlikely she would do this.Spaniards, especially Spaniards with Moorish blood in their veins, do not like to think girls they love capable of carrying on secret correspondence with other men; and I imagined that Lady Vale-Avon was a woman to guess this. Already Carmona knew that Lady Monica was interested in someone else, or had a girlish fancy for him, which might or might not have been frightened away. But his desire for her would not be whetted by the fact that she was receiving letters from that someone else, perhaps sending them to him; and it struck me that Lady Vale-Avon would conceal the correspondence, rather than flaunt it in Carmona's face. If I were right, then I was as safe as before from the Duke'sjealousy; but, had Monica read my letter?On the alert as her mother would be now, I should find it more difficult than ever to communicate with the girl. Yet I could not bear to leave Manzanares in fear of a misunderstanding.Nothing more could be done at the moment, however; and I hurried Ropes off that we might finish our errand and get back by the time that Monica was down.It appeared that the man who had volunteered information about moto-naphtha was waiting to act as guide. He was still at the chemist's, and from there led us to the Casa Consistorial. At the Casa Consistorial were two policemen in the hall, warming themselves over a hole in the ground, where glowed charcoal embers. But the Mayor had not arrived. Without him nothing could be arranged. Besides, even if he were present and willing to consent, the key of the cemetery was with thecura, who might be anywhere.Off we dashed to thecura'shouse, and just in time. Five[pg 190]minutes later, and we might have had to wait hours for him. But there he was, a delightful, white-haired old man, who would be charmed to open the cemetery for our worships, since it was not to bury us; but he could make no move in that direction without the honourable concurrence of the Mayor.Back, then, we bustled to the Casa Consistorial, with the sensation of shuttlecocks, played between battledores at cross purposes.But at last the second battledore was ready to send us in the right direction. The Mayor, a young man, who looked like a lawyer in tall hat and frock-coat, was as polite as only a Spaniard can be. He put himself, and his house, and Manzanares at our service. It was something like being given the freedom of London; and what was more to the point than anything else, he offered us as much moto-naphtha as the town possessed, at any price we pleased to pay.The question was, how much did the town possess; a single quart, or a hundred gallons? The Mayor himself was not sure, so we rattled off in an ancient“simón”to the cemetery to find out; and luckily were able to carry away all we were likely to need for the next two days, while leaving some for the locusts. But between the Casa Consistorial, the house of thecura, the distant cemetery, and the drive back to our stable-garage, it had taken us nearly three hours to achieve our end. Then there was a little lingering with the car, to make sure that all was well and no more tricks had been played; and the walk back to thefondaexhausted the last of my patience. I had not expected to be gone more than an hour, and I had been gone three. Meanwhile, I said to myself, almost anything might have happened. My idea had been to get back by the time that Monica was dressed, and now, for all I could tell, she might have gone.Dick laughed at this suggestion, for, said he, Carmona's chauffeur was not a worker of miracles except, perhaps, on other men's cars; and he could not have got his master's in order and ready to start. His arguments were reasonable; nevertheless, like many[pg 191]other plausible deductions, they were wrong; for the first news we heard at the hotel was that the grey automobile had left nearly an hour before. The chauffeur, it seemed, had been up all night working, and had had assistance in the early morning at a machine-shop. The injuries had been patched up, and the car was expected to get on either to Andujar, or Linares if a certain bridge had been finished.After all, this was not as bad as if we had made no promise to the Duchess. We were bound not to lie in wait for, or closely follow, her son's car; and had it not been for the“luck of the Dream-Book,”Carmona and his party would have been far away last night when we arrived at Manzanares. Had I not been tortured by doubts about the fate of my letter, I might have been philosopher enough to say:“Patience, until Seville!”As it was, patience was the last virtue I could cultivate; and for what remained of that day, I was unable to find the smallest pleasure in motoring.Again we were on the highroad between Madrid and Seville; yet the waving ruts and ridges of hardened mud were sprinkled with a green glaze of grass, as if in treacherous attempt at concealment. Dust curled behind us like smoke, creeping under the tarpaulin that covered our luggage on the roof, and into our suit-cases, powdering our clothing like fine white sugar.Despite the good springs and deep cushions of the car, Pilar's light body danced up and down, as Dick said, like a bit of American popcorn over a hot fire; and our two guests, who had thought themselves motor enthusiasts, did not respond ardently to Dick's forced praises of the sport.How glorious, said he (every other word emphasized with a bump), how glorious not to be bound down to the fixed and inconvenient hours of trains. To stop where and when you like; to start on again when you choose; never to have your view of the choicest bit of scenery blotted out in a tunnel; to be grimed by no railway smoke; always to feel your face fanned by a fresh breeze, tingling with ozone; to read—if you had the seeing eye—the[pg 192]whole life of the country in writing on the road; the tracks of heavy carts; the delicate prints of donkey's feet, trotting to market laden with wine or fruit; the tracing of diligence wheels, or old-fashioned carriages on their way to a bull-fight; the footmarks of peasants economically carrying their shoes over their shoulders; the clover-like imprint of sheeps' little hoofs, and goats'; the pads of shepherd dogs. To flash through kinematographic glimpses of vineland and oliveland, and graceful blue mountain shapes; to see strange villages of whose existence you would never know when plodding along by train; to fly from one living reminder of Don Quixote to another, as we were doing to-day (had we not seen the inn where he was knighted?)—Bang! Never before can I remember hailing with delight the pistol-like report which can mean but one thing; the bursting of a tyre. But I was enchanted that Dick's eloquence should be interrupted.We had jolted through wine-makingValdepeñas, where the red juice of the grape seems to spout from a grey valley of stones; we had passed, in the quaint market-place, the posada which Don Quixote knew; we had bounced through Santa Cruz de Mudela, with its fine old fifteenth century church, and had seen its famous and gaily coloured garters exposed for sale in the shops; and now we were far from towns or villages, out in the country.Luckily, everybody was ready for lunch, and Pilar and the Cherub had had the forethought to order things which would not have occurred to Dick or me. Not far away, on the crest of a hill-billow, stood a road-mender's house, with an outside, adobe oven like a huge beehive. We crawled to it, travelling on the collapsed tyre, and were served by a delightful brown family; served as if we had been the King and his suite who had lunched (so said the brown family) on that spot a few weeks ago. Out came the chairs which the King and his friends had sat in, plates and glasses from which the King and his friends had drunk; and the simple people derived a childlike pleasure from dwelling on the episode.[pg 193]As before, the news of our presence seemed to flash through the air and bring, in the same mysterious way, an audience out of empty space. Pilar said that the people who came were in reality wild birds, seen by our sophisticated eyes in the form of human beings; and as if they had been wild birds, we coaxed them, till they trusted us and fed with us, drinking from our wineskin the blood of the Spanish grape, almost innocent of alcohol. The soft Spanish language, as it fell from their lips, was rich as the taste of that Spanish wine on the tongue, and stirred in my heart a pride of kinsmanship.While we others lunched, Ropes jacked up the Gloria and changed the inner tube, pausing now and then to munch a sandwich or swallow a draught of wine with an unruffled air characteristic of him. When the road-mender mentioned that fourbandidoshad been captured in the morning by the civil guard, on the road along which we had passed, his expression did not change by the twitching of a muscle. Indeed, he looked equal to disposing of half a dozen brigands without the aid of a single guardia civile.After forty minutes by the wayside, we set off to penetrate farther into that melancholy country which Cervantes loved, and almost at once were in the Venta de Cordeñas, that wide and stony waste where Don Quixote rode to do his penance. The gayest spirits must have been dashed by the gloom of the knight's self-imposed prison, and mine were not improved. I had a disquieting impression that Monica's voice, calling an appeal, came echoing from the mountain walls.Of course, there was nothing in it, except superstitious nonsense of which I ought to be ashamed; yet I could not shut my ears to her voice, which seemed to cry the words her fingers once had written:“Don't desert me! Don't leave me alone!”Always the echo followed, as the car mounted higher on the slopes of the Sierra Morena, and such glories of Spain opened out before our eyes as we had not seen yet, even in the splendid Gorge of Pancorbo.[pg 194]Crest above crest, great chains of mountains cut the smooth sapphire of the sky; and as we serpentined into their closer grasp, each loop of the Alpine road gave a new and more fantastic combination of rock and stream. The car was boring into a gorge of astounding sublimity, a hammer-stroke of Vulcan which had cleft the mountain and left behind chips of copper, of gold, of silver, and a rich sprinkling of precious gems.As the god's hammer fell, out of the ruin it made were shaped marvels of form; Olympian castles and giant statues, images of such savage creatures as roamed devastating the earth in days when man was in his childhood.Even the calm countenance of Ropes was transfigured by this burst of splendour.“Makes you forget that roads can be bad, and tyres go wrong, doesn't it, sir?”he said to me.“I could drive through places like these, day and night on end, without food or drink, never knowing if I was done up.”And praise from a chauffeur is praise indeed!We were in the defile of Despeñaperros, the most terrific and, at the same time, the noblest gorge of Spain; and I should have known it from stories told by my father, who had once fought withbandolerosupon this very road. Down into the river that tossed up white plumes of foam far below, he had flung one man, while another fired shot after shot from his carbine, screened behind a rock on the opposite side of the ravine, scarcely a biscuit-throw away.Long before, too, history had been made in this mountain passage whose walls had rung with wilder sounds than the screaming of our siren. The rival battle-cries of Moor and Spaniard had echoed among the rocks, and Christian blood and pagan had mingled in the white spume of the river.I thought of these things, as I looked down into the silent depths of the gulf, and saw the sparkling veins of granite, and purple masses of slate gleam with volcanic life and colour. But still I heard the haunting echo of Monica's voice, in the solitude[pg 195]through which she must lately have passed, perhaps leaving some message, if I could only know.Was it merely a fantastic twist of my nerves, or was her spirit calling, trying to make itself heard and understood?It was Pilar who broke the spell by a sudden clapping of her hands.“Andalucía! dear Andalucía!”she cried; and each one of us, subdued and silenced by the majesty of the scene, started as if waking from sleep.She was pointing at a stone obelisk, looking at which her father smiled and raised his hat.“No more cold,”said he;“no more winds to nip our noses. Here's the dividing line between the north countries and the country of the sun.”Then, as if the obelisk had been the finger of some genie invoking a magic change, an enchantment blurred the stem features of the landscape. It was as though the fierce face of an angry giant had been transformed into that of a beautiful, laughing woman with the sun in her eyes.The defile opened when we had slipped past a half-hidden mountain hamlet or two; widened into a valley bright with colour as the jewels on the spread tail of a peacock; and boat-like, the car rode an undulating sea of green and azure and gold, that scintillated as if a spray of diamonds were tossed into air with the speed of our going.At Santa Elena we were in a Spain I had not seen. At La Carolina we burst into a world fair and fertile as the Garden of Eden; and I remembered the Moorish legend that Heaven is built on the blue that hangs over Andalucía.Hedges of aloe brandished zincen swords and darts; cacti sprawled and leered along the roadside; set in the vivid green of ripening grain, olive groves seemed carved from jade; or the bare rosy shoulders of sloping hillsides turned by contrast their pale tints to tarnished silver. Vines with young gold leaves trailed the purple earth; avenues of acacias dripped perfumes; and as the sun leaned towards the west, the quivering pink light on violet[pg 196]mountains gave to Andalucía the vivid, almost violent colouring one sees in sensational posters.Each girl we passed wore a bright flower shining star-like through the black cloud of her hair. The men had discarded the fur-trimmed Louis XI caps for the broad-brimmed, grey sombreros de Cordoba, and the horses or mules were harnessed with gay splashes of red and blue colour, and bobbing tassels.We had talked of Linares, the lead-mining town, as a halting-place for the night, as we were pledged not to track down the Lecomte; and on the outskirts of Bailen, as twilight fell, the Gloria was brought to a sudden stop in the midst of a pulsating crowd, that we might ask the way.If we aroused their curiosity, they piqued us to the same emotion, for most of the men, and there were hundreds, not only wore upon their legs a kind of divided pinafore, but carried on their backs an apparatus which would have excited wonder in any other than this fairy country.The machine reminded me at first glance of a fire-extinguisher; then of some appliance used by miners to hold a supply of oxygen. One part of me wished to know what the instrument was; the other preferred to remain in ignorance, lest the explanation should prove too commonplace. But Waring had all my curiosity, and none of my scruples; so he asked a question with a gesture more intelligible than his Spanish; and just as I had feared, the weird union of reservoirs and nozzles was no more than a contrivance for spraying vines to protect them from phylloxera.As always, we brought the fascinations of the Cherub to bear upon the crowd, as one trains the latest gun upon the enemy; and his crooning brought out facts which made Dick think it high time he got things into shape, and his motor service to running. It seemed that once upon a time a good road had been made from Bailen to Linares, but the road was crossed by a river; and when the masonry supports for a bridge had been built, it turned out that girders had been forgotten. Somehow, it was nobody's place to jog anybody else's memory, and there the matter had[pg 197]ended, so long ago that grass and flowers had sprouted among the futile stones.It appeared the most natural thing in the world to the people of Bailen, who were accustomed to ford the river, when they wanted to cross, with horses; but though the weather had been dry for the last few days, the recent torrents which had fallen in the mountains, still swelled the volume of water to such a height that it might“put out the fire in the automobile.”I was glad to hear this, because if it would put out our fire, it would put out Carmona's; and as he was prudent in matters concerning his car, he would probably have stopped at Andujar; thus fate would again bring me near to Monica, despite our promise.The main reason for going to Linares was because the Cherub believed there was a fair hotel, built to accommodate Englishmen collected for the lead-mining; therefore it was without regret that we turned the Gloria to follow thecarreterato Cordoba.Our advisers ran after us with a warning to avoid the rough cobbles of Bailen by taking therondawhich skirts the town on its left. So slowly, in dusk that blossomed blue as the myrtle flower, we passed round outside the town, regained the high road, leaping at speed into a world of wide, silvery spaces and mystery of violet hollows, diving into the deep valley of the swollen river, and rejoicing in a hard surface of good macadam for fifteen miles or more.Thus we arrived at Andujar, the lights of our great acetylene lamps (lit before the sky turned from opal to amethyst) prying into dark doorways and windows as Röntgen rays pry through flesh to bone.In the white glare, pretty girls in doorways looked like actresses in a costume play, waiting in the wings to“go on.”But no yells of a stage mob ever were so realistic as those of the unrehearsed band who howled over my poor Gloria as she deposited her passengers at thefonda; and Ropes and I pushed her through a wall of human beings to a stable-garage, where her[pg 198]flywheel gushed a protest of fiery sparks on the high stone step of entrance.Thefondawas passable; but Carmona and his party were not there; neither were they anywhere else in Andujar, as we made it our business to discover; and we guessed that the grey car must after all have ventured to Linares.As it had vanished, we were free to start when we chose next morning. So we chose an early hour, flying over good roads through a land embroidered with the scarlet of poppies, the blue of gentian, the pink of clover, and gold of buttercups, stitched in with the silver of little running streams.“‘Give us bread and give us bulls,’is the cry of this country,”said the Cherub, greeting with joyous glances each feature of his loved Andalucia.“It sounds like a beef sandwich,”Dick reflected aloud; but Pilar reproached him for flippancy.“You mustn't make jokes about bread in Andalucia!”she exclaimed.“And it's called a sin ever to throw away a crumb. Because it's the gift of Heaven, if you drop a bit you must pick it up and apologize by kissing it.”“Why not eat it instead?”asked Dick.“You can do that afterwards. And if bread's made with holes in it, you must stand the holey side up, because the spirit of God enters through the holes to bless you.”“I thought only olives were sacred in Andalucia,”said Dick, staring away over enormous tracts of the silver-grey trees growing out of copper soil, waving as far as the eye could follow, to the floating line of ethereal blue mountains.“They're sacred, too,”assented Pilar.“Did you know, in the old days they used to be sold only for gold, gold carried on mule back in great bags, and exchanged on the spot, for the trees—so many for so much? We have olives at our place, and they're gathered in such a nice old-fashioned way; papa doesn't care for new ways, even if they make a little more money. It's pretty to watch. I should like you to see it, only—Señor Waring doesn't like old-fashioned things.”[pg 199]“I like making the‘little more money,’I'm afraid,”Dick confessed.“Sometimes I like money too—when I want to buy anything. At other times I don't care. Lately I've been saving up. I've got one thousand nine hundred pesetas.”“Good gracious!”laughed Dick,“are you going to buy a bull-farm with such a gigantic sum?”“Funny you should have said that. I'm going to buy one bull. He's the only possession of the Duke of Carmona's that I want, and I want him so much that I've sacrificed oh,—I can't remember how many Paris hats, and shoes, and silk petticoats, and pretty dresses to get him, withallmy own money! The worst of it is, he'llneverknow about the hats and things.”Dick was looking interested now.“What in the name of goodness will you do with him when you get him?”he inquired.“Save him,”said the girl.“From what?”“From the bull-ring. Oh, he's atoro bravo, is Vivillo, a heart of gold. Not the most famoustoreroin Spain shall pierce it. I've loved him for four years, since he was a baby at his mother's side, and Rafael Calmenare used to take me to visit him; loved him better even than Corcito, and all this time I've been saving up to buy him before he's of the age for acorrida. Now I've enough, or nearly, and there aren't many weeks to waste, for soon he'll be five; and already he has the strength and courage of three bulls, my Vivillo! I long to see him again—long for the day when I can put my arms round his great neck, and say,‘Hermanito, you're mine!’”“Your arms round his neck!”gasped Dick.“A fighting bull! You're joking. Say you mean an Irish bull, and put me out of misery.”“He's a true Spanish grandee of a bull, and my arms have been round his neck often,”said Pilarcita.“Then he can't be very fierce.”[pg 200]“He can be terrible. He has nearly killed two men—strangers who teased him, so he meant no harm, poor darling! and they daren't let any except black horses come near him. No Muira bull is more savage than he if he's roused. You know, the Duke of Carmona's bulls are as celebrated as the Muiras themselves. But Vivillo has always loved me, and one or two others—me best, though—and he'll eat out of my hand, the great brown velvet beast, like a kitten.”“How long since he's seen you?”asked Dick.“Six weeks.”“I wouldn't trust his memory.”“I trust it as I would my brother's. You shall see me petting him.”“Great Scott! you won't let her risk her life with this wild beast, will you, Colonel O'Donnel?”Dick cried out.But the Cherub smiled his placid smile.“Don Cipriano calls her Una, because she can tame wild beasts,”said he.Dick's face became almost too expressive. If he did not want Pilar's eyes to read his every emotion, I thought he would be wiser to put on his motor-mask.

[pg 174]XXIIIThe Glorification of MonicaSlowing up, we were almost upon the group; and for once we were welcome to our enemies. Even Carmona's face brightened, a flicker of hope lit Lady Vale-Avon's grey eyes; and the Duchess deliberately courted us with a smile.As for Monica, she was radiant as a child who has been surprised by the home-coming of loved ones; yet there was a new wistfulness in her eyes, despite the joy she showed.“Oh, how glorious that you've come to the rescue!”she cried, all dimples and roses. Still, she looked from me to Pilar, and from Pilar to me, as if she longed to ask one or the other some question which it was impossible to speak; and I said to myself that it would go hard with me if I did not find out before I was many hours older, what that question was.Any port is welcome in a storm or among fellow-motorists, if you are helpless by the roadside with several ladies when night is coming on; and Carmona's first words showed that he had no scruple in making use of us. But with the trials he had gone through, and his natural preference for the help of any other car rather than the hated Gloria, he was in a black mood. He wished to be civil, lest we should be goaded into leaving him in the lurch; yet it was plainly such an effort that I could have laughed aloud. Pilar would have been able to quote paragraph and page of her Dream-Book.The worst damage to the car was a broken spring, though something seemed to have gone wrong also with the ignition in[pg 175]that disastrous bump into thecaniveau. They had been where we found them for a couple of hours, Carmona admitted, without encountering any vehicle or animal to give them a tow. The first hope had been to stagger on to Manzanares (which originally they had meant to pass) with a broken spring; but the bee in the motor's bonnet could not be made to buzz, and in despair, Carmona had been about to send his chauffeur on foot, in search of some conveyance for the ladies and their luggage. More hours must have passed, at best, before the man could have returned to the rescue, and already everybody was hungry.The ladies of the Duke's party had to be transferred to the Gloria; and Dick, with airs of ownership, urged vague and voluble reasons why I should be their companion in the tonneau. We were the masters of the situation, and Carmona's face, as he was obliged to take his seat beside the chauffeur who must steer the car in tow, repaid me for grievous wrongs.Pilar, not to be outdone in ingenuity by Dick, did for me what I could not do for myself, in contriving that I should sit next to Monica. Though I could say nothing for her ears which other ears might not hear, it was a joy to feel her slight shoulder nestling warm against my arm, to know that she could not be snatched from me by her mother or Carmona, but that as it was now, so it must be for many moments, perhaps an hour, to come. There was also satisfaction to be got from the fact that my enemy, bumping on behind in his own disabled car (propelled by our generosity and power), was glaring with malice, envy, and all uncharitableness at my back.My one regret in these moments which should have been perfect, was that my prophetic soul hadn't caused me to write a long letter to Monica, which I might have been able to slip into her hand under cover of rugs and darkness.Ropes had to light the lamps before we saw more of Manzanares than an illusive church spire which kept appearing and disappearing like a will-o'-the-wisp. But the petrol held out, and[pg 176]the Gloria's breathing was regular, despite the weight she had to tow over ruts and across gutters. Once, however, Ropes looked back at me with an expressive movement of the shoulders which I interpreted as,“we're lucky if we get there!”so I could have shouted“hurrah!”at sight of the first houses, though they brought my last moment of happiness.Another instant, and the population of Manzanares was answering to the thrum of our motor, as soldiers to the call of the drum. From somewhere, their saints alone knew where, an army of children poured into the long straight street, and as we slowed to avoid wholesale murder, they took advantage of our consideration to swarm up the car like ants. They ran shouting beside us, climbed on to the steps, hung on behind, fighting so ruthlessly for choice positions that they all but fell under the wheels. One would not have supposed there could be other children left in Spain. How there could be room for these in the town of Manzanares was a wonder; how they could all have turned out on the second in their thousands, was a miracle; and their promptness would have done credit to any commander.The shrill cries of this legion, drowning the sound of the motor, and increasing as the contingent was swelled from each side street, roused the town. Families left their tables and rushed to the door, their supper in their hands. Bakers with white arms left to-morrow's bread in the troughs; a group of farriers shoeing a horse stopped work, until the glowing iron paled. Shopkeepers who had lighted their windows with a blaze of electricity, ran into the street. Mules and donkeys tied to doorposts shared the general excitement, plunged and reared before the advance of the human breaker with the car on its crest snapped their cords, and dashed into their master's houses.Never, among all our successes, had we made such asuccés fouas this; but then, never before had we had a car in tow. Half our triumph belonged to the Lecomte; yet either of us would gladly have dispensed with all; and had it not been for a small but determined policeman who struggled to preserve the[pg 177]credit of the town, we might have been half the night fighting our way to an hotel.He dealt blows and exhortations indiscriminately, piloted us through side streets which it would never have occurred to our imagination to enter, and with exertions worthy of him who“singly kept the bridge,”helped us make a lane for the ladies to dart into the door of the littlefonda.It was an iron door of elaborate openwork, leading, Moorish fashion, through a shallow vestibule into apatio—the first we had seen on our way south; and if it had not been slammed shut with a loud click, by some person inside, half Manzanares would have poured after the fugitives.Assured of the ladies' safety, the men of the two (outwardly) united parties remained to help the chauffeurs and a bewildered landlord to take down luggage. Overwhelmed by a wave of halfgrown children and a thick spray of babies, Carmona's man lost his presence of mind. The two cars had hardly stopped before the little creatures were in them, and on them, and under them, trying to pinch the tyres, blowing the horn, squalling, laughing, crying.“Mon Dieu, c'est un obsession!”wailed the unfortunate Frenchman; and even the imperturbable Ropes showed signs of“nerves.”As fast as the thronging goblins were beaten off, they were up again in redoubled force; but so merry they were, and so handsome was each bold brown face, with its dazzling eyes, that it was impossible to be angry. Somehow, we rescued the luggage, and with the aid of the landlord pitched, or slid, or rolled it through the door, momentarily opened.“For Heaven's sake, sir, see me through this!”implored Ropes, noticing that the men of the party were on the point of following the luggage.“Hate to trouble you, but I don't think my Spanish will run to it.”In pity I climbed into the car to go with him to the stable which the landlord indicated as our garage. It was an experience to be remembered in nightmares; yet there was in it a sort of schoolboy pleasure. We seemed to have done[pg 178]battle against the whole force of the army out against us; nevertheless when we returned to thefonda, swept along by a large bodyguard, we found a regiment assembled round the door. How we got through was food for another wild dream, but we did get through, to stand panting on the other side of the grating, in thepatio.Dozens of dark faces were pressed against the bars, like tier above tier of glowing pansies in a flower-bed; and we knew at last the sensation of those who are the observed, not the observers, in a menagerie.Everyone was in thepatio, where electric lights hanging from the balconies mingled with rich yellow lamplight and ruddy firelight streaming from the kitchen. All the luggage was piled anyhow, in a chaotic heap surging with suit-cases, boiling with dressing-bags; while near by, like Marius and a friend or two at the ruins of Carthage, stood the Duchess, Lady Vale-Avon, Carmona, Dick, and the Cherub. Monica and Pilar had been talking at a distance with a young girl of the house, but seeing me gravitate in their direction, Lady Vale-Avon called her daughter.“The ladies are saying they can't stay here,”announced Dick,his voice in sympathy with a twinkle in his eyes.“I'm not saying so,”cut in Monica.“I think it will be fun; a real adventure. The landlady's wonderful, and all her daughters and nieces beauties. If we're nice to them, they'll be adorable to us.”“The place is a den!”exclaimed Lady Vale-Avon.“There must be something better in the town.”“I'm afraid there isn't,”said the Duke.“This accident has made me helpless. I'm horribly sorry; but we can't get on anywhere else to-night.”“We can sit up,”said the Duchess,“in the automobile.”“Do let's look at the rooms,”begged Monica.“And don't let them see we're finding fault. Their feelings will be hurt.”“What nonsense!”replied Lady Vale-Avon.“As if they had feelings!”[pg 179]“If you don't consider them, they won't take pains to make you comfortable,”I said, knowing by instinct the people with whom we had to deal.“They're beginning to suspect already that something's wrong, and judging from the expression of their faces it will take only a little more for the landlord to say he has no rooms. Then we really may have to sit in the automobiles.”The keeper of thefondaand his family, who had come so warmly to welcome the strangers, were now hovering aloof, silent and suspicious, their spirits dashed by the contemptuous looks of Lady Vale-Avon and the Duchess. Standing in semi-darkness, the landlord's face was a blur of brown shadow, featureless, save for a pair of enormous eyes burning with an emotion which was no longer hospitality. His wife, whose broad shoulder was pressed against her husband's as if to form a line of defence, was a dark-browed, gypsy-like woman, who must once have been beautiful, and might now be formidable. Behind them were grouped a handsome boy, and three or four extraordinarily pretty girls with red and white roses in their hair.“They wouldn't dare turn us out!”exclaimed Lady Vale-Avon.“They can never have had persons of our sort before.”“If you asked, they'd probably retort that Dukes and Marquesses were thick as blackberries,”said I.She glanced at Carmona, hoping for support, but he shrugged his shoulders in despair; and a look from me was a signal for the Cherub to step forward.The atmosphere had begun to tingle, and in a few moments more it might have been too late to make peace with these proud and self-respecting people, who had never submitted to indignity. But in the space of six seconds the magnetism of the Cherub had begun to do its work. He murmured, nodded, and smiled, took the family into his confidence with a few graphic gestures, explained that the ladies were upset by an accident, appealed to the landlord's chivalry, and the landlady's heart. Gathering frowns were chased away by smiles; and when Monica showed[pg 180]her dimples to the boy and girls with a look which pleaded for kindness, the battle was fought and won.They had not many bedrooms. Several were engaged bycommercialtravellers, but these gentlemen should be stowed into one room, their clothing and luggage moved at once. Oh, they would not object when they learned that it was a question of accommodating ladies; or if they did, they must eat their objections for supper; it was no matter. And the landlord and landlady would give up their room, a good one, their worships need have no fear. All should be ready in the opening and closing of an eye. But would we meanwhile have supper? There was always enough for a few unexpected ones.Having listened so far, the Cherub turned blandly to Carmona. These arrangements need not include the Señor Duque's party, unless he liked, of course, but—his palms were extended as if to receive the decision. Plump it fell into them. Everyone must stay, and make the best of it.So the ladies were bundled into a room where they might get rid of the dust, and the men into another; clean rooms, with whitewashed walls, bare save for a pictured saint or two in lurid colours; floors covered with coarse, bright matting; and iron beds with lace-frilled and embroidered pillows.In a quarter of an hour everyone was ready for dinner, but five out of fifteen minutes I had given to the hasty scribbling of a pencilled note for Monica. I hoped to slip it into her hand in the dining-room, but she was closely under guard; and Carmona annexed four seats at the head of the long table, by which manœuvre he secured isolation for his party. It was safe from any sortie of ours, as there was a scattered contingent of commercial travellers already earnestly engaged in dining on either side of the table. Two polite men on the left, and three on the right, all with napkins tucked under their chins, rose, offering to move rather than divide friends; but Carmona assured them that the sacrifice was unnecessary. As they were all paralysed by Monica's beauty, of a type so different from any to which[pg 181]they were accustomed, they had not the self-command to protest; and as dinner went on (in many courses of which the landlord was evidently proud), they could scarcely do justice to theirmerluzaserved with grilled lemon and minced red Spanish pepper; theirtortillaof eggs, potatoes, peas, and ham; their pigeons with olives, or even their freshly baked maccaroni, for gazing languorously at the vision of pink and white and gold.Such charms as Pilar's, though unsurpassable of their kind, went for nothing with these ardent gentlemen; and even the landlord's son, daughters, and nieces who waited upon their guests, forgot half their duties in abject admiration.“An angel!”“a saint!”“a princess of fairyland!”were a few of their whispered adjectives; and when the object of their worship was snatched away by her mother and the Duchess, before the goats'-milk cheese had been brought round, a gloom fell upon the room. The commercial travellers galloped through the remainder of the meal, and went out, hoping perhaps, if they promenaded the street, to have the joy of seeing a light in the radiant being's window. The pretty girls of the household vanished with murmured excuses, leaving us at the mercy of the boy, who sighed grievously, dropped a sugar bowl, and spilled coffee within an ace of the Cherub's shoulder.Pilar presently disappeared also, leaving her three men alone at the table, observed only by a few dozen eager faces pressed against the iron bars protecting the open window.Soon we heard peals of laughter from thepatio; the pretty girls were sallying forth on a foraging expedition in search of a warming-pan to heat the beds of the three great ladies, who feared dampness. In twenty minutes they came back, and we arrived in thepatioin time to see the triumphal entrance of four or five charming creatures, bearing among them a long-handled brass vessel which had probably existed since the days of Philip the Second. But this was only the beginning of the fun; and we made an excuse of our cigarettes to linger, and hear what we could not see.[pg 182]It was not a beautifulpatio; and the public still surged outside the iron-grated door in the hope of further insight into the private lives of the travelling menagerie; but our luggage had been carried to the rooms which were now ready (thanks to the complaisance of the dazzled commercial gentlemen), and there were garden seats, on which we settled ourselves in spite of the chill in the evening air.From the rooms above we heard laughter and ecstatic cries. Evidently the warming-pan was making a sensation as it went its round, or something else had happened; and when at last the girls trooped downstairs from the balcony, I beckoned them to come our way. They skipped to us, wild with delight at the prospect of pouring out their hearts to an appreciative audience.The great warming-pan, stuffed with embers that glowed and paled, was laid on the tiled pavement while the girls wove themselves into a group, with interlacing arms.“Why are you so happy?”I asked“Happy? We have been in paradise, with the angels,”replied the prettiest girl with crimson roses stuck in a bank of copper hair.“There was but one angel,”objected her brunette cousin.“That is true. The two old ones think themselves everything, but they are less than nothing. I would not change my years for theirs, with their jewels and their quarterings. Thanks be to God, in our Spain, we are all as noble as the nobles, or at least in this province!”“You are also all beautiful!”said I.“That you can say so, señor, after seeing that wonder!”exclaimed the landlord's eldest daughter, a creature of carnation and flame.“Ah, the joy of it, we have been undressing her!”“If you could have seen her, with gold hair down to her knees!”gasped a gypsy of fifteen.“And when we had got her dress off, and she was in her—”“Hush, Micaela! it is not seemly that you should mention such garments in the presence ofseñores!”broke in the girl of the copper coronet."Now you are as bad as I was, Mariquita!"NOW YOU ARE AS BAD AS I WAS, MARIQUITA[pg 183]“But why, then, since they are most beautiful? You know well, Mariquita, you yourself said they were like the handwork of fairies, and her shoulders—”“Be silent, foolish one, or I shall have to burn your nose off with the warming-pan!”“And what did the elder ladies say to the young lady's new maids?”I asked quickly, as great eyes began to flash, and scarlet lips to pout.Back came the smiles, and the maidens fell into a fit of schoolgirl giggling.“There was but one Majesty there, praise be to the saints, the English one, who is no doubt the mother of our lady angel. They have two rooms between them, but that of the señorita is tiny, with no door of its own, and only a square glazed hole for a window, though the bed is as good as any, and we have given it the best linen. When we took in the warming-pan, our angel tried to say in Spanish that she was sure our beds were dry and well aired, as indeed they were. She had taken off her bodice, and was undoing her hair, which was so beautiful we could have fallen down and prayed to her as a saint. Then we could not resist, but began helping her to undress, talking about her beauty. She was not offended, though we kissed her hands, and that silly Micaela one of her tiny white feet when we had pulled off the stocking—”“Now you are as bad as I was, Mariquita.”“No, indeed; what is a stocking? A thing it is as well to go without as to wear. That is different. The angel laughed till she was close to tears, and said we were far nicer maids than the one her mother had sent on by railway train in starting by automobile. After this, she would be spoiled for others; and she gave us each one a present. Lola, two wondrous hatpins with blue stones in silver—not that she would ever suffer the tortures of a hat, but it is a great thing to have them. Teresa, a sweet round purse[pg 184]of blue leather, of the size to hold a five peseta piece; Micaela, a handkerchief with lace on the edge, and me an embroidered veil like a gossamer. What did we care that Her Majesty the mother would have sent us away if she could? She had not enough Spanish to make us understand what we did not wish to understand, and at last she saved her breath for another day. But by that time we had finished, for we had put our angel into her night-dress, a thing of cobwebs and lace kept together by blue ribbons, which I should have thought good enough for a queen to wear when mounting her throne.”“You must show us your presents,”said I, with deliberate cunning. All were displayed on the instant, with chattering, laughing, and clamourous claims for rival merits. But the veil was the thing which I looked on to covet. She had worn it one day after rain, when the roads had been clear of dust, and her face had gleamed through the lace as a star gleams through a floating cloud-film. I felt that I could not see it in other hands than mine.While the Cherub compared the gifts with eloquence, I drew Mariquita apart.“I want that veil very much,”said I;“so much that I'll give you a hundred pesetas if you'll part with it.”She opened her tobacco-brown eyes.“But the señor is only a man, and cannot know that the bit of embroidered net is worth no more, in money, than fifteen pesetas at most.”“It wasn't its money-worth I was thinking about.”“A—ah, I see! The señorito—yes, of course, it would be strange if he did not! I love my new veil, not only because it is pretty, but more because it came to me from the most beautiful señorita I have ever seen. Still, since the señorito will value it even more than I can, I will give it to him, though not for the hundred pesetas. I will give it for nothing except his thanks.”I told the girl she was too good; that I could not rob her of the gift just made; but she insisted, and I saw that her pride would be hurt if I refused. So I accepted, while a way of benefitting myself and rewarding her occurred to my mind.[pg 185]“You see how it is with me.”I said, with a confidential air.“You have been very generous. Will you be helpful too?”“You may trust me,”she answered.“I love a love affair, especially if there is difficulty. I shall have an acknowledgednoviomyself soon, I hope. He is a bull-fighter—only a beginner, but he will be great one day, and though my father made a long face at first, now he shrugs his shoulders; and when that is done, there is always hope. Her Majesty the mother makes the long face, does she not?”I nodded.“She will shrug the shoulders by and by.”“I doubt it. But meanwhile, I've written a letter. Will you try to give it to the young lady?”“Yes,”said Mariquita.“I will try my best. I think I can do it. Not to-night, for she has gone to bed, and there would be no excuse to get back to her room, since I must pass through Her Majesty's. But to-morrow morning I will take the ladies' hot water, with oh, such an innocent face! And I will take the letter too.”“Thank you many times,”said I.“The thing isn't done yet.”“It's for your goodwill I thank you in advance. And this is for your bull-fighter, as a present from hisnovia.”I took out my scarf-pin. Her face flushed with pleasure, as it would have flushed for no sum of money. She might have waived away a present for herself, but she could not resist one for thenovio, and I was thanked far beyond the gift's merit.If she went to bed happy, so did I, for I believed that Monica would have my letter in the morning; and if the wistfulness in her eyes meant some new trouble in which I had a part, I hoped that the words I had written might banish it.

Slowing up, we were almost upon the group; and for once we were welcome to our enemies. Even Carmona's face brightened, a flicker of hope lit Lady Vale-Avon's grey eyes; and the Duchess deliberately courted us with a smile.

As for Monica, she was radiant as a child who has been surprised by the home-coming of loved ones; yet there was a new wistfulness in her eyes, despite the joy she showed.

“Oh, how glorious that you've come to the rescue!”she cried, all dimples and roses. Still, she looked from me to Pilar, and from Pilar to me, as if she longed to ask one or the other some question which it was impossible to speak; and I said to myself that it would go hard with me if I did not find out before I was many hours older, what that question was.

Any port is welcome in a storm or among fellow-motorists, if you are helpless by the roadside with several ladies when night is coming on; and Carmona's first words showed that he had no scruple in making use of us. But with the trials he had gone through, and his natural preference for the help of any other car rather than the hated Gloria, he was in a black mood. He wished to be civil, lest we should be goaded into leaving him in the lurch; yet it was plainly such an effort that I could have laughed aloud. Pilar would have been able to quote paragraph and page of her Dream-Book.

The worst damage to the car was a broken spring, though something seemed to have gone wrong also with the ignition in[pg 175]that disastrous bump into thecaniveau. They had been where we found them for a couple of hours, Carmona admitted, without encountering any vehicle or animal to give them a tow. The first hope had been to stagger on to Manzanares (which originally they had meant to pass) with a broken spring; but the bee in the motor's bonnet could not be made to buzz, and in despair, Carmona had been about to send his chauffeur on foot, in search of some conveyance for the ladies and their luggage. More hours must have passed, at best, before the man could have returned to the rescue, and already everybody was hungry.

The ladies of the Duke's party had to be transferred to the Gloria; and Dick, with airs of ownership, urged vague and voluble reasons why I should be their companion in the tonneau. We were the masters of the situation, and Carmona's face, as he was obliged to take his seat beside the chauffeur who must steer the car in tow, repaid me for grievous wrongs.

Pilar, not to be outdone in ingenuity by Dick, did for me what I could not do for myself, in contriving that I should sit next to Monica. Though I could say nothing for her ears which other ears might not hear, it was a joy to feel her slight shoulder nestling warm against my arm, to know that she could not be snatched from me by her mother or Carmona, but that as it was now, so it must be for many moments, perhaps an hour, to come. There was also satisfaction to be got from the fact that my enemy, bumping on behind in his own disabled car (propelled by our generosity and power), was glaring with malice, envy, and all uncharitableness at my back.

My one regret in these moments which should have been perfect, was that my prophetic soul hadn't caused me to write a long letter to Monica, which I might have been able to slip into her hand under cover of rugs and darkness.

Ropes had to light the lamps before we saw more of Manzanares than an illusive church spire which kept appearing and disappearing like a will-o'-the-wisp. But the petrol held out, and[pg 176]the Gloria's breathing was regular, despite the weight she had to tow over ruts and across gutters. Once, however, Ropes looked back at me with an expressive movement of the shoulders which I interpreted as,“we're lucky if we get there!”so I could have shouted“hurrah!”at sight of the first houses, though they brought my last moment of happiness.

Another instant, and the population of Manzanares was answering to the thrum of our motor, as soldiers to the call of the drum. From somewhere, their saints alone knew where, an army of children poured into the long straight street, and as we slowed to avoid wholesale murder, they took advantage of our consideration to swarm up the car like ants. They ran shouting beside us, climbed on to the steps, hung on behind, fighting so ruthlessly for choice positions that they all but fell under the wheels. One would not have supposed there could be other children left in Spain. How there could be room for these in the town of Manzanares was a wonder; how they could all have turned out on the second in their thousands, was a miracle; and their promptness would have done credit to any commander.

The shrill cries of this legion, drowning the sound of the motor, and increasing as the contingent was swelled from each side street, roused the town. Families left their tables and rushed to the door, their supper in their hands. Bakers with white arms left to-morrow's bread in the troughs; a group of farriers shoeing a horse stopped work, until the glowing iron paled. Shopkeepers who had lighted their windows with a blaze of electricity, ran into the street. Mules and donkeys tied to doorposts shared the general excitement, plunged and reared before the advance of the human breaker with the car on its crest snapped their cords, and dashed into their master's houses.

Never, among all our successes, had we made such asuccés fouas this; but then, never before had we had a car in tow. Half our triumph belonged to the Lecomte; yet either of us would gladly have dispensed with all; and had it not been for a small but determined policeman who struggled to preserve the[pg 177]credit of the town, we might have been half the night fighting our way to an hotel.

He dealt blows and exhortations indiscriminately, piloted us through side streets which it would never have occurred to our imagination to enter, and with exertions worthy of him who“singly kept the bridge,”helped us make a lane for the ladies to dart into the door of the littlefonda.

It was an iron door of elaborate openwork, leading, Moorish fashion, through a shallow vestibule into apatio—the first we had seen on our way south; and if it had not been slammed shut with a loud click, by some person inside, half Manzanares would have poured after the fugitives.

Assured of the ladies' safety, the men of the two (outwardly) united parties remained to help the chauffeurs and a bewildered landlord to take down luggage. Overwhelmed by a wave of halfgrown children and a thick spray of babies, Carmona's man lost his presence of mind. The two cars had hardly stopped before the little creatures were in them, and on them, and under them, trying to pinch the tyres, blowing the horn, squalling, laughing, crying.“Mon Dieu, c'est un obsession!”wailed the unfortunate Frenchman; and even the imperturbable Ropes showed signs of“nerves.”

As fast as the thronging goblins were beaten off, they were up again in redoubled force; but so merry they were, and so handsome was each bold brown face, with its dazzling eyes, that it was impossible to be angry. Somehow, we rescued the luggage, and with the aid of the landlord pitched, or slid, or rolled it through the door, momentarily opened.

“For Heaven's sake, sir, see me through this!”implored Ropes, noticing that the men of the party were on the point of following the luggage.“Hate to trouble you, but I don't think my Spanish will run to it.”In pity I climbed into the car to go with him to the stable which the landlord indicated as our garage. It was an experience to be remembered in nightmares; yet there was in it a sort of schoolboy pleasure. We seemed to have done[pg 178]battle against the whole force of the army out against us; nevertheless when we returned to thefonda, swept along by a large bodyguard, we found a regiment assembled round the door. How we got through was food for another wild dream, but we did get through, to stand panting on the other side of the grating, in thepatio.

Dozens of dark faces were pressed against the bars, like tier above tier of glowing pansies in a flower-bed; and we knew at last the sensation of those who are the observed, not the observers, in a menagerie.

Everyone was in thepatio, where electric lights hanging from the balconies mingled with rich yellow lamplight and ruddy firelight streaming from the kitchen. All the luggage was piled anyhow, in a chaotic heap surging with suit-cases, boiling with dressing-bags; while near by, like Marius and a friend or two at the ruins of Carthage, stood the Duchess, Lady Vale-Avon, Carmona, Dick, and the Cherub. Monica and Pilar had been talking at a distance with a young girl of the house, but seeing me gravitate in their direction, Lady Vale-Avon called her daughter.

“The ladies are saying they can't stay here,”announced Dick,his voice in sympathy with a twinkle in his eyes.

“I'm not saying so,”cut in Monica.“I think it will be fun; a real adventure. The landlady's wonderful, and all her daughters and nieces beauties. If we're nice to them, they'll be adorable to us.”

“The place is a den!”exclaimed Lady Vale-Avon.“There must be something better in the town.”

“I'm afraid there isn't,”said the Duke.“This accident has made me helpless. I'm horribly sorry; but we can't get on anywhere else to-night.”

“We can sit up,”said the Duchess,“in the automobile.”

“Do let's look at the rooms,”begged Monica.“And don't let them see we're finding fault. Their feelings will be hurt.”

“What nonsense!”replied Lady Vale-Avon.“As if they had feelings!”

[pg 179]“If you don't consider them, they won't take pains to make you comfortable,”I said, knowing by instinct the people with whom we had to deal.“They're beginning to suspect already that something's wrong, and judging from the expression of their faces it will take only a little more for the landlord to say he has no rooms. Then we really may have to sit in the automobiles.”

The keeper of thefondaand his family, who had come so warmly to welcome the strangers, were now hovering aloof, silent and suspicious, their spirits dashed by the contemptuous looks of Lady Vale-Avon and the Duchess. Standing in semi-darkness, the landlord's face was a blur of brown shadow, featureless, save for a pair of enormous eyes burning with an emotion which was no longer hospitality. His wife, whose broad shoulder was pressed against her husband's as if to form a line of defence, was a dark-browed, gypsy-like woman, who must once have been beautiful, and might now be formidable. Behind them were grouped a handsome boy, and three or four extraordinarily pretty girls with red and white roses in their hair.

“They wouldn't dare turn us out!”exclaimed Lady Vale-Avon.“They can never have had persons of our sort before.”

“If you asked, they'd probably retort that Dukes and Marquesses were thick as blackberries,”said I.

She glanced at Carmona, hoping for support, but he shrugged his shoulders in despair; and a look from me was a signal for the Cherub to step forward.

The atmosphere had begun to tingle, and in a few moments more it might have been too late to make peace with these proud and self-respecting people, who had never submitted to indignity. But in the space of six seconds the magnetism of the Cherub had begun to do its work. He murmured, nodded, and smiled, took the family into his confidence with a few graphic gestures, explained that the ladies were upset by an accident, appealed to the landlord's chivalry, and the landlady's heart. Gathering frowns were chased away by smiles; and when Monica showed[pg 180]her dimples to the boy and girls with a look which pleaded for kindness, the battle was fought and won.

They had not many bedrooms. Several were engaged bycommercialtravellers, but these gentlemen should be stowed into one room, their clothing and luggage moved at once. Oh, they would not object when they learned that it was a question of accommodating ladies; or if they did, they must eat their objections for supper; it was no matter. And the landlord and landlady would give up their room, a good one, their worships need have no fear. All should be ready in the opening and closing of an eye. But would we meanwhile have supper? There was always enough for a few unexpected ones.

Having listened so far, the Cherub turned blandly to Carmona. These arrangements need not include the Señor Duque's party, unless he liked, of course, but—his palms were extended as if to receive the decision. Plump it fell into them. Everyone must stay, and make the best of it.

So the ladies were bundled into a room where they might get rid of the dust, and the men into another; clean rooms, with whitewashed walls, bare save for a pictured saint or two in lurid colours; floors covered with coarse, bright matting; and iron beds with lace-frilled and embroidered pillows.

In a quarter of an hour everyone was ready for dinner, but five out of fifteen minutes I had given to the hasty scribbling of a pencilled note for Monica. I hoped to slip it into her hand in the dining-room, but she was closely under guard; and Carmona annexed four seats at the head of the long table, by which manœuvre he secured isolation for his party. It was safe from any sortie of ours, as there was a scattered contingent of commercial travellers already earnestly engaged in dining on either side of the table. Two polite men on the left, and three on the right, all with napkins tucked under their chins, rose, offering to move rather than divide friends; but Carmona assured them that the sacrifice was unnecessary. As they were all paralysed by Monica's beauty, of a type so different from any to which[pg 181]they were accustomed, they had not the self-command to protest; and as dinner went on (in many courses of which the landlord was evidently proud), they could scarcely do justice to theirmerluzaserved with grilled lemon and minced red Spanish pepper; theirtortillaof eggs, potatoes, peas, and ham; their pigeons with olives, or even their freshly baked maccaroni, for gazing languorously at the vision of pink and white and gold.

Such charms as Pilar's, though unsurpassable of their kind, went for nothing with these ardent gentlemen; and even the landlord's son, daughters, and nieces who waited upon their guests, forgot half their duties in abject admiration.“An angel!”“a saint!”“a princess of fairyland!”were a few of their whispered adjectives; and when the object of their worship was snatched away by her mother and the Duchess, before the goats'-milk cheese had been brought round, a gloom fell upon the room. The commercial travellers galloped through the remainder of the meal, and went out, hoping perhaps, if they promenaded the street, to have the joy of seeing a light in the radiant being's window. The pretty girls of the household vanished with murmured excuses, leaving us at the mercy of the boy, who sighed grievously, dropped a sugar bowl, and spilled coffee within an ace of the Cherub's shoulder.

Pilar presently disappeared also, leaving her three men alone at the table, observed only by a few dozen eager faces pressed against the iron bars protecting the open window.

Soon we heard peals of laughter from thepatio; the pretty girls were sallying forth on a foraging expedition in search of a warming-pan to heat the beds of the three great ladies, who feared dampness. In twenty minutes they came back, and we arrived in thepatioin time to see the triumphal entrance of four or five charming creatures, bearing among them a long-handled brass vessel which had probably existed since the days of Philip the Second. But this was only the beginning of the fun; and we made an excuse of our cigarettes to linger, and hear what we could not see.

[pg 182]It was not a beautifulpatio; and the public still surged outside the iron-grated door in the hope of further insight into the private lives of the travelling menagerie; but our luggage had been carried to the rooms which were now ready (thanks to the complaisance of the dazzled commercial gentlemen), and there were garden seats, on which we settled ourselves in spite of the chill in the evening air.

From the rooms above we heard laughter and ecstatic cries. Evidently the warming-pan was making a sensation as it went its round, or something else had happened; and when at last the girls trooped downstairs from the balcony, I beckoned them to come our way. They skipped to us, wild with delight at the prospect of pouring out their hearts to an appreciative audience.

The great warming-pan, stuffed with embers that glowed and paled, was laid on the tiled pavement while the girls wove themselves into a group, with interlacing arms.

“Why are you so happy?”I asked

“Happy? We have been in paradise, with the angels,”replied the prettiest girl with crimson roses stuck in a bank of copper hair.

“There was but one angel,”objected her brunette cousin.

“That is true. The two old ones think themselves everything, but they are less than nothing. I would not change my years for theirs, with their jewels and their quarterings. Thanks be to God, in our Spain, we are all as noble as the nobles, or at least in this province!”

“You are also all beautiful!”said I.

“That you can say so, señor, after seeing that wonder!”exclaimed the landlord's eldest daughter, a creature of carnation and flame.“Ah, the joy of it, we have been undressing her!”

“If you could have seen her, with gold hair down to her knees!”gasped a gypsy of fifteen.“And when we had got her dress off, and she was in her—”

“Hush, Micaela! it is not seemly that you should mention such garments in the presence ofseñores!”broke in the girl of the copper coronet.

"Now you are as bad as I was, Mariquita!"NOW YOU ARE AS BAD AS I WAS, MARIQUITA

NOW YOU ARE AS BAD AS I WAS, MARIQUITA

[pg 183]“But why, then, since they are most beautiful? You know well, Mariquita, you yourself said they were like the handwork of fairies, and her shoulders—”

“Be silent, foolish one, or I shall have to burn your nose off with the warming-pan!”

“And what did the elder ladies say to the young lady's new maids?”I asked quickly, as great eyes began to flash, and scarlet lips to pout.

Back came the smiles, and the maidens fell into a fit of schoolgirl giggling.

“There was but one Majesty there, praise be to the saints, the English one, who is no doubt the mother of our lady angel. They have two rooms between them, but that of the señorita is tiny, with no door of its own, and only a square glazed hole for a window, though the bed is as good as any, and we have given it the best linen. When we took in the warming-pan, our angel tried to say in Spanish that she was sure our beds were dry and well aired, as indeed they were. She had taken off her bodice, and was undoing her hair, which was so beautiful we could have fallen down and prayed to her as a saint. Then we could not resist, but began helping her to undress, talking about her beauty. She was not offended, though we kissed her hands, and that silly Micaela one of her tiny white feet when we had pulled off the stocking—”

“Now you are as bad as I was, Mariquita.”

“No, indeed; what is a stocking? A thing it is as well to go without as to wear. That is different. The angel laughed till she was close to tears, and said we were far nicer maids than the one her mother had sent on by railway train in starting by automobile. After this, she would be spoiled for others; and she gave us each one a present. Lola, two wondrous hatpins with blue stones in silver—not that she would ever suffer the tortures of a hat, but it is a great thing to have them. Teresa, a sweet round purse[pg 184]of blue leather, of the size to hold a five peseta piece; Micaela, a handkerchief with lace on the edge, and me an embroidered veil like a gossamer. What did we care that Her Majesty the mother would have sent us away if she could? She had not enough Spanish to make us understand what we did not wish to understand, and at last she saved her breath for another day. But by that time we had finished, for we had put our angel into her night-dress, a thing of cobwebs and lace kept together by blue ribbons, which I should have thought good enough for a queen to wear when mounting her throne.”

“You must show us your presents,”said I, with deliberate cunning. All were displayed on the instant, with chattering, laughing, and clamourous claims for rival merits. But the veil was the thing which I looked on to covet. She had worn it one day after rain, when the roads had been clear of dust, and her face had gleamed through the lace as a star gleams through a floating cloud-film. I felt that I could not see it in other hands than mine.

While the Cherub compared the gifts with eloquence, I drew Mariquita apart.“I want that veil very much,”said I;“so much that I'll give you a hundred pesetas if you'll part with it.”

She opened her tobacco-brown eyes.“But the señor is only a man, and cannot know that the bit of embroidered net is worth no more, in money, than fifteen pesetas at most.”

“It wasn't its money-worth I was thinking about.”

“A—ah, I see! The señorito—yes, of course, it would be strange if he did not! I love my new veil, not only because it is pretty, but more because it came to me from the most beautiful señorita I have ever seen. Still, since the señorito will value it even more than I can, I will give it to him, though not for the hundred pesetas. I will give it for nothing except his thanks.”

I told the girl she was too good; that I could not rob her of the gift just made; but she insisted, and I saw that her pride would be hurt if I refused. So I accepted, while a way of benefitting myself and rewarding her occurred to my mind.

[pg 185]“You see how it is with me.”I said, with a confidential air.“You have been very generous. Will you be helpful too?”

“You may trust me,”she answered.“I love a love affair, especially if there is difficulty. I shall have an acknowledgednoviomyself soon, I hope. He is a bull-fighter—only a beginner, but he will be great one day, and though my father made a long face at first, now he shrugs his shoulders; and when that is done, there is always hope. Her Majesty the mother makes the long face, does she not?”

I nodded.

“She will shrug the shoulders by and by.”

“I doubt it. But meanwhile, I've written a letter. Will you try to give it to the young lady?”

“Yes,”said Mariquita.“I will try my best. I think I can do it. Not to-night, for she has gone to bed, and there would be no excuse to get back to her room, since I must pass through Her Majesty's. But to-morrow morning I will take the ladies' hot water, with oh, such an innocent face! And I will take the letter too.”

“Thank you many times,”said I.

“The thing isn't done yet.”

“It's for your goodwill I thank you in advance. And this is for your bull-fighter, as a present from hisnovia.”

I took out my scarf-pin. Her face flushed with pleasure, as it would have flushed for no sum of money. She might have waived away a present for herself, but she could not resist one for thenovio, and I was thanked far beyond the gift's merit.

If she went to bed happy, so did I, for I believed that Monica would have my letter in the morning; and if the wistfulness in her eyes meant some new trouble in which I had a part, I hoped that the words I had written might banish it.

[pg 186]XXIVThe Goodwill of MariquitaNevertheless I could not sleep on my hard but clean pillows, for wondering about that look of Monica's, and its meaning; and whenever I shut my eyes, hordes of red and yellow figures poured out of white houses upon white roads, forming irritating, kaleidoscopic patterns on my tired retina.Each hour that passed was cried by the watchman, far away, and then close under my window; a fearsome cry like a groan of agony uttered by a madman in a dying spasm.I was glad when morning came; and after such a bath as two or three miniature jugs of water afforded (the deer-eyed boy wondered in the name of all the saints what I could do with so many), I threw off the brain-clouds of a sleepless night.Before long Monica would have my letter. She would know—if she could have doubted—that if I had loved her at first, I worshipped her now. She would know why we had not followed more closely yesterday; and why—unless Carmona chose to accept our help again—we would go on before the grey car to-day. She would know also that my most earnest hope was to take her away, out of the reach of harm.I was dressed, and had had my coffee and hard, fat roll of Spanish bread, by half-past seven, as I was sure Ropes would be wanting to see me. I would not have disturbed Dick, who slept in a room across thepatio, but I found him in the dining-room, wrestling with a glass of thick chocolate and a finger-shaped sweet biscuit.“I'm trying to like Spanish customs,”said he.[pg 187]I laughed.“Because, if I'm going to carry through that scheme of mine about motor traffic, I may have to live on the spot, you see.”“Oh!”said I.“And what about Colonel O'Donnel's copper mines? Have you thought of a means to persuade him it's his duty to have them worked?”“In a way, I have,”Dick answered dryly.“An indirect sort of way. What about our gasoline? Heard anything about it?”“No. I'm going to find Ropes.”“Rather a sell for Carmona, if he did order ourbidonspricked, to feel it's his fault if we're held up as long as he is.”“There's Ropes in thepatio,”I said.“I'll go and interview him.”“What news?”I asked.“Well, sir, I did what the landlord said last night, and had a try for moto-naphtha—as they call it here—at the chemist's.”“Did they have any?”“Oh yes, sir, they had some. As much as a pint apiece, in the two shops. They wanted to sell it by the ounce.”Dick and I laughed, though my mirth was not care-free. I had visions of being stuck at this place until Ropes made a journey to Madrid and back, Carmona's car slipping away long before we were ready.“I was afraid it was hopeless to look for petrol here,”I said, striving for resignation, even though I saw Mariquita going upstairs with two battered tins of hot water.“Not yet, sir. A man who heard me asking for moto-naphtha at the chemist's, advised me to try the cemetery.”“The cemetery? You misunderstood the word.”“No, sir; itwascemetery. And what's more, he said the Mayor keeps it there to kill lobsters.”This statement, delivered somewhat nervously, was received with derision.“The fellow was stuffing you,”said Dick.“I don't think so, sir.”[pg 188]“Then he's mad,”I insisted.“Fishing for lobsters with moto-naphtha in a cemetery at Manzanares is a story Baron Munchausen would have thought twice about before telling.”“Langostasdoes meanlangouste—or lobsters, I suppose, sir?”asked Ropes.“Ye—es,”I answered thoughtfully. Then lightning flashed across the darkness of my mind.“It means locusts as well,”said I.“They use petrol to kill locusts, and for some reason best known to themselves keep it at the cemetery. We'll go, Ropes, and persuade them to sell us more than an ounce.”“Right, sir. At once?”“In a moment,”said I.Mariquita, empty-handed, was coming downstairs. I waylaid her, under that portion of the balcony hidden from the window of Lady Vale-Avon's room.“Did you deliver the letter?”I asked.“Yes, señor.”“To the young lady herself?”“To herself. But I must tell you what worries me, señor. As I was leaving the outer room, I heard a sound like a cry of distress, from the inner room. I looked back, and Her Majesty the mother had gone in. That is all I know. I could do nothing, whatever had happened, and I felt it would be well to escape before I could be questioned.”“What do you think happened?”“How can I tell, señor? Unless the terrible lady snatched your letter from the angel.”“At least, I hope the angel had had time to read it.”“I do not know, señorito. There was not much time; but she might have been quick; and if the letter was not long, there is still hope.”This was poor comfort. All my joyous anticipations dashed, I tried to think of some way of finding out whether Monica had read my letter, and whether there were any way of smuggling another to her.[pg 189]The note had been written in such haste, that I scarcely knew what I had said. No name had been signed; nevertheless, if Lady Vale-Avon read what I had written, she would say to herself,“It is not Cristóbal O'Donnel who says these things, but a more dangerous man.”If she had the letter, she could show it to Carmona; but, as I thought the matter over, I decided that it was unlikely she would do this.Spaniards, especially Spaniards with Moorish blood in their veins, do not like to think girls they love capable of carrying on secret correspondence with other men; and I imagined that Lady Vale-Avon was a woman to guess this. Already Carmona knew that Lady Monica was interested in someone else, or had a girlish fancy for him, which might or might not have been frightened away. But his desire for her would not be whetted by the fact that she was receiving letters from that someone else, perhaps sending them to him; and it struck me that Lady Vale-Avon would conceal the correspondence, rather than flaunt it in Carmona's face. If I were right, then I was as safe as before from the Duke'sjealousy; but, had Monica read my letter?On the alert as her mother would be now, I should find it more difficult than ever to communicate with the girl. Yet I could not bear to leave Manzanares in fear of a misunderstanding.Nothing more could be done at the moment, however; and I hurried Ropes off that we might finish our errand and get back by the time that Monica was down.It appeared that the man who had volunteered information about moto-naphtha was waiting to act as guide. He was still at the chemist's, and from there led us to the Casa Consistorial. At the Casa Consistorial were two policemen in the hall, warming themselves over a hole in the ground, where glowed charcoal embers. But the Mayor had not arrived. Without him nothing could be arranged. Besides, even if he were present and willing to consent, the key of the cemetery was with thecura, who might be anywhere.Off we dashed to thecura'shouse, and just in time. Five[pg 190]minutes later, and we might have had to wait hours for him. But there he was, a delightful, white-haired old man, who would be charmed to open the cemetery for our worships, since it was not to bury us; but he could make no move in that direction without the honourable concurrence of the Mayor.Back, then, we bustled to the Casa Consistorial, with the sensation of shuttlecocks, played between battledores at cross purposes.But at last the second battledore was ready to send us in the right direction. The Mayor, a young man, who looked like a lawyer in tall hat and frock-coat, was as polite as only a Spaniard can be. He put himself, and his house, and Manzanares at our service. It was something like being given the freedom of London; and what was more to the point than anything else, he offered us as much moto-naphtha as the town possessed, at any price we pleased to pay.The question was, how much did the town possess; a single quart, or a hundred gallons? The Mayor himself was not sure, so we rattled off in an ancient“simón”to the cemetery to find out; and luckily were able to carry away all we were likely to need for the next two days, while leaving some for the locusts. But between the Casa Consistorial, the house of thecura, the distant cemetery, and the drive back to our stable-garage, it had taken us nearly three hours to achieve our end. Then there was a little lingering with the car, to make sure that all was well and no more tricks had been played; and the walk back to thefondaexhausted the last of my patience. I had not expected to be gone more than an hour, and I had been gone three. Meanwhile, I said to myself, almost anything might have happened. My idea had been to get back by the time that Monica was dressed, and now, for all I could tell, she might have gone.Dick laughed at this suggestion, for, said he, Carmona's chauffeur was not a worker of miracles except, perhaps, on other men's cars; and he could not have got his master's in order and ready to start. His arguments were reasonable; nevertheless, like many[pg 191]other plausible deductions, they were wrong; for the first news we heard at the hotel was that the grey automobile had left nearly an hour before. The chauffeur, it seemed, had been up all night working, and had had assistance in the early morning at a machine-shop. The injuries had been patched up, and the car was expected to get on either to Andujar, or Linares if a certain bridge had been finished.After all, this was not as bad as if we had made no promise to the Duchess. We were bound not to lie in wait for, or closely follow, her son's car; and had it not been for the“luck of the Dream-Book,”Carmona and his party would have been far away last night when we arrived at Manzanares. Had I not been tortured by doubts about the fate of my letter, I might have been philosopher enough to say:“Patience, until Seville!”As it was, patience was the last virtue I could cultivate; and for what remained of that day, I was unable to find the smallest pleasure in motoring.Again we were on the highroad between Madrid and Seville; yet the waving ruts and ridges of hardened mud were sprinkled with a green glaze of grass, as if in treacherous attempt at concealment. Dust curled behind us like smoke, creeping under the tarpaulin that covered our luggage on the roof, and into our suit-cases, powdering our clothing like fine white sugar.Despite the good springs and deep cushions of the car, Pilar's light body danced up and down, as Dick said, like a bit of American popcorn over a hot fire; and our two guests, who had thought themselves motor enthusiasts, did not respond ardently to Dick's forced praises of the sport.How glorious, said he (every other word emphasized with a bump), how glorious not to be bound down to the fixed and inconvenient hours of trains. To stop where and when you like; to start on again when you choose; never to have your view of the choicest bit of scenery blotted out in a tunnel; to be grimed by no railway smoke; always to feel your face fanned by a fresh breeze, tingling with ozone; to read—if you had the seeing eye—the[pg 192]whole life of the country in writing on the road; the tracks of heavy carts; the delicate prints of donkey's feet, trotting to market laden with wine or fruit; the tracing of diligence wheels, or old-fashioned carriages on their way to a bull-fight; the footmarks of peasants economically carrying their shoes over their shoulders; the clover-like imprint of sheeps' little hoofs, and goats'; the pads of shepherd dogs. To flash through kinematographic glimpses of vineland and oliveland, and graceful blue mountain shapes; to see strange villages of whose existence you would never know when plodding along by train; to fly from one living reminder of Don Quixote to another, as we were doing to-day (had we not seen the inn where he was knighted?)—Bang! Never before can I remember hailing with delight the pistol-like report which can mean but one thing; the bursting of a tyre. But I was enchanted that Dick's eloquence should be interrupted.We had jolted through wine-makingValdepeñas, where the red juice of the grape seems to spout from a grey valley of stones; we had passed, in the quaint market-place, the posada which Don Quixote knew; we had bounced through Santa Cruz de Mudela, with its fine old fifteenth century church, and had seen its famous and gaily coloured garters exposed for sale in the shops; and now we were far from towns or villages, out in the country.Luckily, everybody was ready for lunch, and Pilar and the Cherub had had the forethought to order things which would not have occurred to Dick or me. Not far away, on the crest of a hill-billow, stood a road-mender's house, with an outside, adobe oven like a huge beehive. We crawled to it, travelling on the collapsed tyre, and were served by a delightful brown family; served as if we had been the King and his suite who had lunched (so said the brown family) on that spot a few weeks ago. Out came the chairs which the King and his friends had sat in, plates and glasses from which the King and his friends had drunk; and the simple people derived a childlike pleasure from dwelling on the episode.[pg 193]As before, the news of our presence seemed to flash through the air and bring, in the same mysterious way, an audience out of empty space. Pilar said that the people who came were in reality wild birds, seen by our sophisticated eyes in the form of human beings; and as if they had been wild birds, we coaxed them, till they trusted us and fed with us, drinking from our wineskin the blood of the Spanish grape, almost innocent of alcohol. The soft Spanish language, as it fell from their lips, was rich as the taste of that Spanish wine on the tongue, and stirred in my heart a pride of kinsmanship.While we others lunched, Ropes jacked up the Gloria and changed the inner tube, pausing now and then to munch a sandwich or swallow a draught of wine with an unruffled air characteristic of him. When the road-mender mentioned that fourbandidoshad been captured in the morning by the civil guard, on the road along which we had passed, his expression did not change by the twitching of a muscle. Indeed, he looked equal to disposing of half a dozen brigands without the aid of a single guardia civile.After forty minutes by the wayside, we set off to penetrate farther into that melancholy country which Cervantes loved, and almost at once were in the Venta de Cordeñas, that wide and stony waste where Don Quixote rode to do his penance. The gayest spirits must have been dashed by the gloom of the knight's self-imposed prison, and mine were not improved. I had a disquieting impression that Monica's voice, calling an appeal, came echoing from the mountain walls.Of course, there was nothing in it, except superstitious nonsense of which I ought to be ashamed; yet I could not shut my ears to her voice, which seemed to cry the words her fingers once had written:“Don't desert me! Don't leave me alone!”Always the echo followed, as the car mounted higher on the slopes of the Sierra Morena, and such glories of Spain opened out before our eyes as we had not seen yet, even in the splendid Gorge of Pancorbo.[pg 194]Crest above crest, great chains of mountains cut the smooth sapphire of the sky; and as we serpentined into their closer grasp, each loop of the Alpine road gave a new and more fantastic combination of rock and stream. The car was boring into a gorge of astounding sublimity, a hammer-stroke of Vulcan which had cleft the mountain and left behind chips of copper, of gold, of silver, and a rich sprinkling of precious gems.As the god's hammer fell, out of the ruin it made were shaped marvels of form; Olympian castles and giant statues, images of such savage creatures as roamed devastating the earth in days when man was in his childhood.Even the calm countenance of Ropes was transfigured by this burst of splendour.“Makes you forget that roads can be bad, and tyres go wrong, doesn't it, sir?”he said to me.“I could drive through places like these, day and night on end, without food or drink, never knowing if I was done up.”And praise from a chauffeur is praise indeed!We were in the defile of Despeñaperros, the most terrific and, at the same time, the noblest gorge of Spain; and I should have known it from stories told by my father, who had once fought withbandolerosupon this very road. Down into the river that tossed up white plumes of foam far below, he had flung one man, while another fired shot after shot from his carbine, screened behind a rock on the opposite side of the ravine, scarcely a biscuit-throw away.Long before, too, history had been made in this mountain passage whose walls had rung with wilder sounds than the screaming of our siren. The rival battle-cries of Moor and Spaniard had echoed among the rocks, and Christian blood and pagan had mingled in the white spume of the river.I thought of these things, as I looked down into the silent depths of the gulf, and saw the sparkling veins of granite, and purple masses of slate gleam with volcanic life and colour. But still I heard the haunting echo of Monica's voice, in the solitude[pg 195]through which she must lately have passed, perhaps leaving some message, if I could only know.Was it merely a fantastic twist of my nerves, or was her spirit calling, trying to make itself heard and understood?It was Pilar who broke the spell by a sudden clapping of her hands.“Andalucía! dear Andalucía!”she cried; and each one of us, subdued and silenced by the majesty of the scene, started as if waking from sleep.She was pointing at a stone obelisk, looking at which her father smiled and raised his hat.“No more cold,”said he;“no more winds to nip our noses. Here's the dividing line between the north countries and the country of the sun.”Then, as if the obelisk had been the finger of some genie invoking a magic change, an enchantment blurred the stem features of the landscape. It was as though the fierce face of an angry giant had been transformed into that of a beautiful, laughing woman with the sun in her eyes.The defile opened when we had slipped past a half-hidden mountain hamlet or two; widened into a valley bright with colour as the jewels on the spread tail of a peacock; and boat-like, the car rode an undulating sea of green and azure and gold, that scintillated as if a spray of diamonds were tossed into air with the speed of our going.At Santa Elena we were in a Spain I had not seen. At La Carolina we burst into a world fair and fertile as the Garden of Eden; and I remembered the Moorish legend that Heaven is built on the blue that hangs over Andalucía.Hedges of aloe brandished zincen swords and darts; cacti sprawled and leered along the roadside; set in the vivid green of ripening grain, olive groves seemed carved from jade; or the bare rosy shoulders of sloping hillsides turned by contrast their pale tints to tarnished silver. Vines with young gold leaves trailed the purple earth; avenues of acacias dripped perfumes; and as the sun leaned towards the west, the quivering pink light on violet[pg 196]mountains gave to Andalucía the vivid, almost violent colouring one sees in sensational posters.Each girl we passed wore a bright flower shining star-like through the black cloud of her hair. The men had discarded the fur-trimmed Louis XI caps for the broad-brimmed, grey sombreros de Cordoba, and the horses or mules were harnessed with gay splashes of red and blue colour, and bobbing tassels.We had talked of Linares, the lead-mining town, as a halting-place for the night, as we were pledged not to track down the Lecomte; and on the outskirts of Bailen, as twilight fell, the Gloria was brought to a sudden stop in the midst of a pulsating crowd, that we might ask the way.If we aroused their curiosity, they piqued us to the same emotion, for most of the men, and there were hundreds, not only wore upon their legs a kind of divided pinafore, but carried on their backs an apparatus which would have excited wonder in any other than this fairy country.The machine reminded me at first glance of a fire-extinguisher; then of some appliance used by miners to hold a supply of oxygen. One part of me wished to know what the instrument was; the other preferred to remain in ignorance, lest the explanation should prove too commonplace. But Waring had all my curiosity, and none of my scruples; so he asked a question with a gesture more intelligible than his Spanish; and just as I had feared, the weird union of reservoirs and nozzles was no more than a contrivance for spraying vines to protect them from phylloxera.As always, we brought the fascinations of the Cherub to bear upon the crowd, as one trains the latest gun upon the enemy; and his crooning brought out facts which made Dick think it high time he got things into shape, and his motor service to running. It seemed that once upon a time a good road had been made from Bailen to Linares, but the road was crossed by a river; and when the masonry supports for a bridge had been built, it turned out that girders had been forgotten. Somehow, it was nobody's place to jog anybody else's memory, and there the matter had[pg 197]ended, so long ago that grass and flowers had sprouted among the futile stones.It appeared the most natural thing in the world to the people of Bailen, who were accustomed to ford the river, when they wanted to cross, with horses; but though the weather had been dry for the last few days, the recent torrents which had fallen in the mountains, still swelled the volume of water to such a height that it might“put out the fire in the automobile.”I was glad to hear this, because if it would put out our fire, it would put out Carmona's; and as he was prudent in matters concerning his car, he would probably have stopped at Andujar; thus fate would again bring me near to Monica, despite our promise.The main reason for going to Linares was because the Cherub believed there was a fair hotel, built to accommodate Englishmen collected for the lead-mining; therefore it was without regret that we turned the Gloria to follow thecarreterato Cordoba.Our advisers ran after us with a warning to avoid the rough cobbles of Bailen by taking therondawhich skirts the town on its left. So slowly, in dusk that blossomed blue as the myrtle flower, we passed round outside the town, regained the high road, leaping at speed into a world of wide, silvery spaces and mystery of violet hollows, diving into the deep valley of the swollen river, and rejoicing in a hard surface of good macadam for fifteen miles or more.Thus we arrived at Andujar, the lights of our great acetylene lamps (lit before the sky turned from opal to amethyst) prying into dark doorways and windows as Röntgen rays pry through flesh to bone.In the white glare, pretty girls in doorways looked like actresses in a costume play, waiting in the wings to“go on.”But no yells of a stage mob ever were so realistic as those of the unrehearsed band who howled over my poor Gloria as she deposited her passengers at thefonda; and Ropes and I pushed her through a wall of human beings to a stable-garage, where her[pg 198]flywheel gushed a protest of fiery sparks on the high stone step of entrance.Thefondawas passable; but Carmona and his party were not there; neither were they anywhere else in Andujar, as we made it our business to discover; and we guessed that the grey car must after all have ventured to Linares.As it had vanished, we were free to start when we chose next morning. So we chose an early hour, flying over good roads through a land embroidered with the scarlet of poppies, the blue of gentian, the pink of clover, and gold of buttercups, stitched in with the silver of little running streams.“‘Give us bread and give us bulls,’is the cry of this country,”said the Cherub, greeting with joyous glances each feature of his loved Andalucia.“It sounds like a beef sandwich,”Dick reflected aloud; but Pilar reproached him for flippancy.“You mustn't make jokes about bread in Andalucia!”she exclaimed.“And it's called a sin ever to throw away a crumb. Because it's the gift of Heaven, if you drop a bit you must pick it up and apologize by kissing it.”“Why not eat it instead?”asked Dick.“You can do that afterwards. And if bread's made with holes in it, you must stand the holey side up, because the spirit of God enters through the holes to bless you.”“I thought only olives were sacred in Andalucia,”said Dick, staring away over enormous tracts of the silver-grey trees growing out of copper soil, waving as far as the eye could follow, to the floating line of ethereal blue mountains.“They're sacred, too,”assented Pilar.“Did you know, in the old days they used to be sold only for gold, gold carried on mule back in great bags, and exchanged on the spot, for the trees—so many for so much? We have olives at our place, and they're gathered in such a nice old-fashioned way; papa doesn't care for new ways, even if they make a little more money. It's pretty to watch. I should like you to see it, only—Señor Waring doesn't like old-fashioned things.”[pg 199]“I like making the‘little more money,’I'm afraid,”Dick confessed.“Sometimes I like money too—when I want to buy anything. At other times I don't care. Lately I've been saving up. I've got one thousand nine hundred pesetas.”“Good gracious!”laughed Dick,“are you going to buy a bull-farm with such a gigantic sum?”“Funny you should have said that. I'm going to buy one bull. He's the only possession of the Duke of Carmona's that I want, and I want him so much that I've sacrificed oh,—I can't remember how many Paris hats, and shoes, and silk petticoats, and pretty dresses to get him, withallmy own money! The worst of it is, he'llneverknow about the hats and things.”Dick was looking interested now.“What in the name of goodness will you do with him when you get him?”he inquired.“Save him,”said the girl.“From what?”“From the bull-ring. Oh, he's atoro bravo, is Vivillo, a heart of gold. Not the most famoustoreroin Spain shall pierce it. I've loved him for four years, since he was a baby at his mother's side, and Rafael Calmenare used to take me to visit him; loved him better even than Corcito, and all this time I've been saving up to buy him before he's of the age for acorrida. Now I've enough, or nearly, and there aren't many weeks to waste, for soon he'll be five; and already he has the strength and courage of three bulls, my Vivillo! I long to see him again—long for the day when I can put my arms round his great neck, and say,‘Hermanito, you're mine!’”“Your arms round his neck!”gasped Dick.“A fighting bull! You're joking. Say you mean an Irish bull, and put me out of misery.”“He's a true Spanish grandee of a bull, and my arms have been round his neck often,”said Pilarcita.“Then he can't be very fierce.”[pg 200]“He can be terrible. He has nearly killed two men—strangers who teased him, so he meant no harm, poor darling! and they daren't let any except black horses come near him. No Muira bull is more savage than he if he's roused. You know, the Duke of Carmona's bulls are as celebrated as the Muiras themselves. But Vivillo has always loved me, and one or two others—me best, though—and he'll eat out of my hand, the great brown velvet beast, like a kitten.”“How long since he's seen you?”asked Dick.“Six weeks.”“I wouldn't trust his memory.”“I trust it as I would my brother's. You shall see me petting him.”“Great Scott! you won't let her risk her life with this wild beast, will you, Colonel O'Donnel?”Dick cried out.But the Cherub smiled his placid smile.“Don Cipriano calls her Una, because she can tame wild beasts,”said he.Dick's face became almost too expressive. If he did not want Pilar's eyes to read his every emotion, I thought he would be wiser to put on his motor-mask.

Nevertheless I could not sleep on my hard but clean pillows, for wondering about that look of Monica's, and its meaning; and whenever I shut my eyes, hordes of red and yellow figures poured out of white houses upon white roads, forming irritating, kaleidoscopic patterns on my tired retina.

Each hour that passed was cried by the watchman, far away, and then close under my window; a fearsome cry like a groan of agony uttered by a madman in a dying spasm.

I was glad when morning came; and after such a bath as two or three miniature jugs of water afforded (the deer-eyed boy wondered in the name of all the saints what I could do with so many), I threw off the brain-clouds of a sleepless night.

Before long Monica would have my letter. She would know—if she could have doubted—that if I had loved her at first, I worshipped her now. She would know why we had not followed more closely yesterday; and why—unless Carmona chose to accept our help again—we would go on before the grey car to-day. She would know also that my most earnest hope was to take her away, out of the reach of harm.

I was dressed, and had had my coffee and hard, fat roll of Spanish bread, by half-past seven, as I was sure Ropes would be wanting to see me. I would not have disturbed Dick, who slept in a room across thepatio, but I found him in the dining-room, wrestling with a glass of thick chocolate and a finger-shaped sweet biscuit.“I'm trying to like Spanish customs,”said he.

[pg 187]I laughed.

“Because, if I'm going to carry through that scheme of mine about motor traffic, I may have to live on the spot, you see.”

“Oh!”said I.“And what about Colonel O'Donnel's copper mines? Have you thought of a means to persuade him it's his duty to have them worked?”

“In a way, I have,”Dick answered dryly.“An indirect sort of way. What about our gasoline? Heard anything about it?”

“No. I'm going to find Ropes.”

“Rather a sell for Carmona, if he did order ourbidonspricked, to feel it's his fault if we're held up as long as he is.”

“There's Ropes in thepatio,”I said.“I'll go and interview him.”

“What news?”I asked.

“Well, sir, I did what the landlord said last night, and had a try for moto-naphtha—as they call it here—at the chemist's.”

“Did they have any?”

“Oh yes, sir, they had some. As much as a pint apiece, in the two shops. They wanted to sell it by the ounce.”

Dick and I laughed, though my mirth was not care-free. I had visions of being stuck at this place until Ropes made a journey to Madrid and back, Carmona's car slipping away long before we were ready.

“I was afraid it was hopeless to look for petrol here,”I said, striving for resignation, even though I saw Mariquita going upstairs with two battered tins of hot water.

“Not yet, sir. A man who heard me asking for moto-naphtha at the chemist's, advised me to try the cemetery.”

“The cemetery? You misunderstood the word.”

“No, sir; itwascemetery. And what's more, he said the Mayor keeps it there to kill lobsters.”

This statement, delivered somewhat nervously, was received with derision.

“The fellow was stuffing you,”said Dick.

“I don't think so, sir.”

[pg 188]“Then he's mad,”I insisted.“Fishing for lobsters with moto-naphtha in a cemetery at Manzanares is a story Baron Munchausen would have thought twice about before telling.”

“Langostasdoes meanlangouste—or lobsters, I suppose, sir?”asked Ropes.

“Ye—es,”I answered thoughtfully. Then lightning flashed across the darkness of my mind.“It means locusts as well,”said I.“They use petrol to kill locusts, and for some reason best known to themselves keep it at the cemetery. We'll go, Ropes, and persuade them to sell us more than an ounce.”

“Right, sir. At once?”

“In a moment,”said I.

Mariquita, empty-handed, was coming downstairs. I waylaid her, under that portion of the balcony hidden from the window of Lady Vale-Avon's room.

“Did you deliver the letter?”I asked.

“Yes, señor.”

“To the young lady herself?”

“To herself. But I must tell you what worries me, señor. As I was leaving the outer room, I heard a sound like a cry of distress, from the inner room. I looked back, and Her Majesty the mother had gone in. That is all I know. I could do nothing, whatever had happened, and I felt it would be well to escape before I could be questioned.”

“What do you think happened?”

“How can I tell, señor? Unless the terrible lady snatched your letter from the angel.”

“At least, I hope the angel had had time to read it.”

“I do not know, señorito. There was not much time; but she might have been quick; and if the letter was not long, there is still hope.”

This was poor comfort. All my joyous anticipations dashed, I tried to think of some way of finding out whether Monica had read my letter, and whether there were any way of smuggling another to her.

[pg 189]The note had been written in such haste, that I scarcely knew what I had said. No name had been signed; nevertheless, if Lady Vale-Avon read what I had written, she would say to herself,“It is not Cristóbal O'Donnel who says these things, but a more dangerous man.”If she had the letter, she could show it to Carmona; but, as I thought the matter over, I decided that it was unlikely she would do this.

Spaniards, especially Spaniards with Moorish blood in their veins, do not like to think girls they love capable of carrying on secret correspondence with other men; and I imagined that Lady Vale-Avon was a woman to guess this. Already Carmona knew that Lady Monica was interested in someone else, or had a girlish fancy for him, which might or might not have been frightened away. But his desire for her would not be whetted by the fact that she was receiving letters from that someone else, perhaps sending them to him; and it struck me that Lady Vale-Avon would conceal the correspondence, rather than flaunt it in Carmona's face. If I were right, then I was as safe as before from the Duke'sjealousy; but, had Monica read my letter?

On the alert as her mother would be now, I should find it more difficult than ever to communicate with the girl. Yet I could not bear to leave Manzanares in fear of a misunderstanding.

Nothing more could be done at the moment, however; and I hurried Ropes off that we might finish our errand and get back by the time that Monica was down.

It appeared that the man who had volunteered information about moto-naphtha was waiting to act as guide. He was still at the chemist's, and from there led us to the Casa Consistorial. At the Casa Consistorial were two policemen in the hall, warming themselves over a hole in the ground, where glowed charcoal embers. But the Mayor had not arrived. Without him nothing could be arranged. Besides, even if he were present and willing to consent, the key of the cemetery was with thecura, who might be anywhere.

Off we dashed to thecura'shouse, and just in time. Five[pg 190]minutes later, and we might have had to wait hours for him. But there he was, a delightful, white-haired old man, who would be charmed to open the cemetery for our worships, since it was not to bury us; but he could make no move in that direction without the honourable concurrence of the Mayor.

Back, then, we bustled to the Casa Consistorial, with the sensation of shuttlecocks, played between battledores at cross purposes.

But at last the second battledore was ready to send us in the right direction. The Mayor, a young man, who looked like a lawyer in tall hat and frock-coat, was as polite as only a Spaniard can be. He put himself, and his house, and Manzanares at our service. It was something like being given the freedom of London; and what was more to the point than anything else, he offered us as much moto-naphtha as the town possessed, at any price we pleased to pay.

The question was, how much did the town possess; a single quart, or a hundred gallons? The Mayor himself was not sure, so we rattled off in an ancient“simón”to the cemetery to find out; and luckily were able to carry away all we were likely to need for the next two days, while leaving some for the locusts. But between the Casa Consistorial, the house of thecura, the distant cemetery, and the drive back to our stable-garage, it had taken us nearly three hours to achieve our end. Then there was a little lingering with the car, to make sure that all was well and no more tricks had been played; and the walk back to thefondaexhausted the last of my patience. I had not expected to be gone more than an hour, and I had been gone three. Meanwhile, I said to myself, almost anything might have happened. My idea had been to get back by the time that Monica was dressed, and now, for all I could tell, she might have gone.

Dick laughed at this suggestion, for, said he, Carmona's chauffeur was not a worker of miracles except, perhaps, on other men's cars; and he could not have got his master's in order and ready to start. His arguments were reasonable; nevertheless, like many[pg 191]other plausible deductions, they were wrong; for the first news we heard at the hotel was that the grey automobile had left nearly an hour before. The chauffeur, it seemed, had been up all night working, and had had assistance in the early morning at a machine-shop. The injuries had been patched up, and the car was expected to get on either to Andujar, or Linares if a certain bridge had been finished.

After all, this was not as bad as if we had made no promise to the Duchess. We were bound not to lie in wait for, or closely follow, her son's car; and had it not been for the“luck of the Dream-Book,”Carmona and his party would have been far away last night when we arrived at Manzanares. Had I not been tortured by doubts about the fate of my letter, I might have been philosopher enough to say:“Patience, until Seville!”

As it was, patience was the last virtue I could cultivate; and for what remained of that day, I was unable to find the smallest pleasure in motoring.

Again we were on the highroad between Madrid and Seville; yet the waving ruts and ridges of hardened mud were sprinkled with a green glaze of grass, as if in treacherous attempt at concealment. Dust curled behind us like smoke, creeping under the tarpaulin that covered our luggage on the roof, and into our suit-cases, powdering our clothing like fine white sugar.

Despite the good springs and deep cushions of the car, Pilar's light body danced up and down, as Dick said, like a bit of American popcorn over a hot fire; and our two guests, who had thought themselves motor enthusiasts, did not respond ardently to Dick's forced praises of the sport.

How glorious, said he (every other word emphasized with a bump), how glorious not to be bound down to the fixed and inconvenient hours of trains. To stop where and when you like; to start on again when you choose; never to have your view of the choicest bit of scenery blotted out in a tunnel; to be grimed by no railway smoke; always to feel your face fanned by a fresh breeze, tingling with ozone; to read—if you had the seeing eye—the[pg 192]whole life of the country in writing on the road; the tracks of heavy carts; the delicate prints of donkey's feet, trotting to market laden with wine or fruit; the tracing of diligence wheels, or old-fashioned carriages on their way to a bull-fight; the footmarks of peasants economically carrying their shoes over their shoulders; the clover-like imprint of sheeps' little hoofs, and goats'; the pads of shepherd dogs. To flash through kinematographic glimpses of vineland and oliveland, and graceful blue mountain shapes; to see strange villages of whose existence you would never know when plodding along by train; to fly from one living reminder of Don Quixote to another, as we were doing to-day (had we not seen the inn where he was knighted?)—Bang! Never before can I remember hailing with delight the pistol-like report which can mean but one thing; the bursting of a tyre. But I was enchanted that Dick's eloquence should be interrupted.

We had jolted through wine-makingValdepeñas, where the red juice of the grape seems to spout from a grey valley of stones; we had passed, in the quaint market-place, the posada which Don Quixote knew; we had bounced through Santa Cruz de Mudela, with its fine old fifteenth century church, and had seen its famous and gaily coloured garters exposed for sale in the shops; and now we were far from towns or villages, out in the country.

Luckily, everybody was ready for lunch, and Pilar and the Cherub had had the forethought to order things which would not have occurred to Dick or me. Not far away, on the crest of a hill-billow, stood a road-mender's house, with an outside, adobe oven like a huge beehive. We crawled to it, travelling on the collapsed tyre, and were served by a delightful brown family; served as if we had been the King and his suite who had lunched (so said the brown family) on that spot a few weeks ago. Out came the chairs which the King and his friends had sat in, plates and glasses from which the King and his friends had drunk; and the simple people derived a childlike pleasure from dwelling on the episode.

[pg 193]As before, the news of our presence seemed to flash through the air and bring, in the same mysterious way, an audience out of empty space. Pilar said that the people who came were in reality wild birds, seen by our sophisticated eyes in the form of human beings; and as if they had been wild birds, we coaxed them, till they trusted us and fed with us, drinking from our wineskin the blood of the Spanish grape, almost innocent of alcohol. The soft Spanish language, as it fell from their lips, was rich as the taste of that Spanish wine on the tongue, and stirred in my heart a pride of kinsmanship.

While we others lunched, Ropes jacked up the Gloria and changed the inner tube, pausing now and then to munch a sandwich or swallow a draught of wine with an unruffled air characteristic of him. When the road-mender mentioned that fourbandidoshad been captured in the morning by the civil guard, on the road along which we had passed, his expression did not change by the twitching of a muscle. Indeed, he looked equal to disposing of half a dozen brigands without the aid of a single guardia civile.

After forty minutes by the wayside, we set off to penetrate farther into that melancholy country which Cervantes loved, and almost at once were in the Venta de Cordeñas, that wide and stony waste where Don Quixote rode to do his penance. The gayest spirits must have been dashed by the gloom of the knight's self-imposed prison, and mine were not improved. I had a disquieting impression that Monica's voice, calling an appeal, came echoing from the mountain walls.

Of course, there was nothing in it, except superstitious nonsense of which I ought to be ashamed; yet I could not shut my ears to her voice, which seemed to cry the words her fingers once had written:“Don't desert me! Don't leave me alone!”

Always the echo followed, as the car mounted higher on the slopes of the Sierra Morena, and such glories of Spain opened out before our eyes as we had not seen yet, even in the splendid Gorge of Pancorbo.

[pg 194]Crest above crest, great chains of mountains cut the smooth sapphire of the sky; and as we serpentined into their closer grasp, each loop of the Alpine road gave a new and more fantastic combination of rock and stream. The car was boring into a gorge of astounding sublimity, a hammer-stroke of Vulcan which had cleft the mountain and left behind chips of copper, of gold, of silver, and a rich sprinkling of precious gems.

As the god's hammer fell, out of the ruin it made were shaped marvels of form; Olympian castles and giant statues, images of such savage creatures as roamed devastating the earth in days when man was in his childhood.

Even the calm countenance of Ropes was transfigured by this burst of splendour.“Makes you forget that roads can be bad, and tyres go wrong, doesn't it, sir?”he said to me.“I could drive through places like these, day and night on end, without food or drink, never knowing if I was done up.”

And praise from a chauffeur is praise indeed!

We were in the defile of Despeñaperros, the most terrific and, at the same time, the noblest gorge of Spain; and I should have known it from stories told by my father, who had once fought withbandolerosupon this very road. Down into the river that tossed up white plumes of foam far below, he had flung one man, while another fired shot after shot from his carbine, screened behind a rock on the opposite side of the ravine, scarcely a biscuit-throw away.

Long before, too, history had been made in this mountain passage whose walls had rung with wilder sounds than the screaming of our siren. The rival battle-cries of Moor and Spaniard had echoed among the rocks, and Christian blood and pagan had mingled in the white spume of the river.

I thought of these things, as I looked down into the silent depths of the gulf, and saw the sparkling veins of granite, and purple masses of slate gleam with volcanic life and colour. But still I heard the haunting echo of Monica's voice, in the solitude[pg 195]through which she must lately have passed, perhaps leaving some message, if I could only know.

Was it merely a fantastic twist of my nerves, or was her spirit calling, trying to make itself heard and understood?

It was Pilar who broke the spell by a sudden clapping of her hands.“Andalucía! dear Andalucía!”she cried; and each one of us, subdued and silenced by the majesty of the scene, started as if waking from sleep.

She was pointing at a stone obelisk, looking at which her father smiled and raised his hat.

“No more cold,”said he;“no more winds to nip our noses. Here's the dividing line between the north countries and the country of the sun.”

Then, as if the obelisk had been the finger of some genie invoking a magic change, an enchantment blurred the stem features of the landscape. It was as though the fierce face of an angry giant had been transformed into that of a beautiful, laughing woman with the sun in her eyes.

The defile opened when we had slipped past a half-hidden mountain hamlet or two; widened into a valley bright with colour as the jewels on the spread tail of a peacock; and boat-like, the car rode an undulating sea of green and azure and gold, that scintillated as if a spray of diamonds were tossed into air with the speed of our going.

At Santa Elena we were in a Spain I had not seen. At La Carolina we burst into a world fair and fertile as the Garden of Eden; and I remembered the Moorish legend that Heaven is built on the blue that hangs over Andalucía.

Hedges of aloe brandished zincen swords and darts; cacti sprawled and leered along the roadside; set in the vivid green of ripening grain, olive groves seemed carved from jade; or the bare rosy shoulders of sloping hillsides turned by contrast their pale tints to tarnished silver. Vines with young gold leaves trailed the purple earth; avenues of acacias dripped perfumes; and as the sun leaned towards the west, the quivering pink light on violet[pg 196]mountains gave to Andalucía the vivid, almost violent colouring one sees in sensational posters.

Each girl we passed wore a bright flower shining star-like through the black cloud of her hair. The men had discarded the fur-trimmed Louis XI caps for the broad-brimmed, grey sombreros de Cordoba, and the horses or mules were harnessed with gay splashes of red and blue colour, and bobbing tassels.

We had talked of Linares, the lead-mining town, as a halting-place for the night, as we were pledged not to track down the Lecomte; and on the outskirts of Bailen, as twilight fell, the Gloria was brought to a sudden stop in the midst of a pulsating crowd, that we might ask the way.

If we aroused their curiosity, they piqued us to the same emotion, for most of the men, and there were hundreds, not only wore upon their legs a kind of divided pinafore, but carried on their backs an apparatus which would have excited wonder in any other than this fairy country.

The machine reminded me at first glance of a fire-extinguisher; then of some appliance used by miners to hold a supply of oxygen. One part of me wished to know what the instrument was; the other preferred to remain in ignorance, lest the explanation should prove too commonplace. But Waring had all my curiosity, and none of my scruples; so he asked a question with a gesture more intelligible than his Spanish; and just as I had feared, the weird union of reservoirs and nozzles was no more than a contrivance for spraying vines to protect them from phylloxera.

As always, we brought the fascinations of the Cherub to bear upon the crowd, as one trains the latest gun upon the enemy; and his crooning brought out facts which made Dick think it high time he got things into shape, and his motor service to running. It seemed that once upon a time a good road had been made from Bailen to Linares, but the road was crossed by a river; and when the masonry supports for a bridge had been built, it turned out that girders had been forgotten. Somehow, it was nobody's place to jog anybody else's memory, and there the matter had[pg 197]ended, so long ago that grass and flowers had sprouted among the futile stones.

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

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

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

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

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

In the white glare, pretty girls in doorways looked like actresses in a costume play, waiting in the wings to“go on.”But no yells of a stage mob ever were so realistic as those of the unrehearsed band who howled over my poor Gloria as she deposited her passengers at thefonda; and Ropes and I pushed her through a wall of human beings to a stable-garage, where her[pg 198]flywheel gushed a protest of fiery sparks on the high stone step of entrance.

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

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

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

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

“Why not eat it instead?”asked Dick.

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

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

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

[pg 199]“I like making the‘little more money,’I'm afraid,”Dick confessed.

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

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

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

Dick was looking interested now.

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

“Save him,”said the girl.

“From what?”

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

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

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

“Then he can't be very fierce.”

[pg 200]“He can be terrible. He has nearly killed two men—strangers who teased him, so he meant no harm, poor darling! and they daren't let any except black horses come near him. No Muira bull is more savage than he if he's roused. You know, the Duke of Carmona's bulls are as celebrated as the Muiras themselves. But Vivillo has always loved me, and one or two others—me best, though—and he'll eat out of my hand, the great brown velvet beast, like a kitten.”

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

“Six weeks.”

“I wouldn't trust his memory.”

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

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

But the Cherub smiled his placid smile.

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

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

Back to IndexNext