XXV

[pg 201]XXVWhat Cordoba LackedThrough a flowery field of cloth-of-gold we came, while the afternoon was young, into Cordoba—“Kartuba the Important,”lying like a grave entombing its dead glory, prone at the foot of tombstone mountains.After the dazzle of wild-flowers shining in the sun, and the ozone of country breezes, a sudden entrance into the network of narrow streets was like being thrown, without a clue, into the Minotaur's dark labyrinth.I had thought that no town could have narrower streets than Toledo; but the streets of Cordoba were mere slits between house-walls. As we scraped through on the car, Dick likened the town to a huge white cake divided into slices by a sharp knife, but left in shape with only one or two pieces pulled out to loosen the mass.Still, the stone-paved slits contrived to make pictures; with here and there a pair of splendid Moorish doors, a row of ancient eastern-patterned windows, or a fairy glimpse of a sunlitpatiobeyond a tunnel of shadow; a fountain spraying jewels, a waving of palms and glow of hanging roses.“She's sure to be here,”I said to myself, as we stopped at last before the principal hotel.“Since the journey's supposed to be a pleasure trip, Carmona's bound to give his guests time to see the sights of Cordoba.”But nothing was known of the Duke and his party at the hotel, although there was a rumour that an automobile had passed through the town in the morning.[pg 202]The Cherub, consulted, was of opinion that if Carmona's car had come, it must have remained.“There'd be nowhere for them to stop afterwards short of Seville,”he said,“unless Carmona, and that's near Seville. They must be lurking in Cordoba—perhaps at the Marqués de Villa-blanca's, who's a friend of the Duke's. We shall come across our lovely little lady presently, if we get about in the town; in thePaseo del GranCapitán, or thePatio de los Naranjos, or the cathedral, or by the ruins of theAlcázar.”“Besides, I thought you'd made up your mind not to worry till we got to Seville,”said Dick.“So I had,”I answered.“But I have a feeling as if something had gone wrong.”“Any reason for the feeling—except the feeling itself?”asked Dick.I shook my head, not caring to mention the letter that might have gone astray.“Nothing I can define.”“Then I guess it's all right, and you're developing nerves.”“I knowjusthow he feels,”said Pilar, with a reproachful look at Dick, with whom she was at odds since the episode of the bull.“There was an expression in Lady Monica's eyes, wasn't there, at Manzanares, as if she were sad? Oh, I saw it; and they wouldn't let me get within whispering distance of her afterwards, or I should have found out what it meant. I had the idea that they wereparticularlyanxious to keep me away, and I wondered if there were any new reason. I'm not surprised that Don Ramón is worried. One can see that Señor Waring's never been in love!”“Oh, haven't I?”exclaimed Dick; which, of course made matters worse; and to mend them, he went on blundering. "What doyouknow about the symptoms?"“Girls are born knowing things it takes men years to learn,”said Pilar.It did not allay my anxiety that she should have noticed what I had noticed. But I clung to the Cherub's assurance, hoping,[pg 203]when we had set out on our explorations, to meet her, to see her face light up with the radiance I knew.But there were no strangers save ourselves, and a few wandering Americans under the palms and orange trees of thepaseodedicated to the memory ofEl GranCapitán.We wandered—Pilar keeping at my side, and leaving Dick to her father—from gate to gate outside the Mosque-Cathedral which once made Cordoba the Mecca of Europe; gazing up at the tremendous mass of honey-coloured masonry rising like a vast fortress from its buttresses of stone; lingering under the bell-tower of thePuerta del Perdonbecause Pilar“felt as if something would happen there.”But nothing did happen; and we went to face the blighting of renewed hopes in the Court of Oranges, whose melancholy charm and sensuous perfume was sad as the song of a nightingale when summer is dying.She was not there; nor could we find her in the marble forest of the pillared cathedral, though, while Dick and Pilar made up their differences over the jewelled mosaics, I searched for her.“I tell you, Ramón, there's some satisfaction in feeling that you're looking at the best things the world's got to show,”said Dick, almost in my ear,“and there are lots of them in your country, especially in Cordoba, though I suppose the Moors would weep to see it now. But you don't seem to be enjoying them, in spite of risking such a lot to come where they are.”I didn't remind him that the risk I ran was for the one best thing in all the world, which was only temporarily in my country, and that my depression came because it was not at the moment visible. But Pilar did not need reminding, and in the way of sweet women, tried to“keep my mind occupied”by talking history and legend, confusing them deliciously, and defending her stories of beautiful Egilona and fair Florinda by saying that, anyhow, nobody cared whether they were true or not. Besides, whatwashistory, since dull people were continually discovering that none of the best bits had ever happened?“I choose to believe in Florinda,”she cried,“and all the other[pg 204]beautiful women who influenced kings, and made wars, and upset countries. Without them and their love-stories, history would be like faded tapestry without gold threads.”So Dick ceased to argue, and in silence we left the gem-like perfection of the third Mihrab, to wander once more through the wilderness of gleaming columns that were now like over-arching trees, now like falling fountains.No dusky vista out of those many changing ones framed the figure I longed to see; and when we had left the cathedral and climbed to the gardens and towers where stood once theAlcázarof Gothic and Moorish glories, it was the same story of disappointment. Only the Americans we had seen in thepaseowere there, more interested than I in such fragments as they could catch of Pilar's tales. Dungeons where Theodofredo had been blinded, and Witica the wicked had paid for his crimes; vanished halls where Rodrigo reigned and loved before the dark day beside the Guadalete lost the crown for him and Christendom; what did they hold of interest since the garden of lilacs and roses which covered their ruins was empty of one Presence?When we had seen everything, I left my friends in the hall of the hotel choosing curios from glass cases, and went out again in search of news concerning the automobile which had passed in the morning.Presumably it had attracted a crowd, yet no one seemed to know anything of it until at last, just as I was giving up hope, I met an old man who had seen a large grey motor-car at the railway station. A few minutes later, I had solved the mystery of the Lecomte's disappearance. It had arrived early; its passengers had been conducted round Cordoba in the smallest possible time by Carmona; it had then been driven to the station; and with its late occupants had gone to Seville by the same train.There might have been several motives for this move. The car might have been partially disabled, not having been properly prepared at Manzanares; or Carmona might have determined to thwart the destiny which so far had kept me near him. I was[pg 205]inclined to accept the latter theory, and it did not tend to promote my peace of mind.I was glad to hear, however, that the train was not due at Seville until late that evening. If we made an early start next day, it was not likely that the situation could be much changed before I arrived, free of obligations to the Duchess.Of course, said Pilar, before I had time to ask, they would be ready to start early, oh, very early. It would be beautiful to be in the country before the sun had drunk up the dew on the grass, and withered the roses of dawn in the clouds. There was no fear of cold now that we were in dear Andalucía. Yes! we would have coffee at six, and leave at half-past.I should not have dared suggest such a trial of moral courage, but I accepted the sacrifice; so the roses of morning which Pilar loved still bloomed in the garden of the sky, and trailed their reflection in the Guadalquivir, as we rolled over the old bridge and past the white, Moorish hills.A morning in Paradise could scarcely be more beautiful; and the pinky-purple blossoms of thealamoshimmering in a rosy mist against dark cypress trees, or mingling with the white lace of hawthorn was a colour-symphony of Spring.Dignified country houses no longer raised brown-tiled roofs from among groves of olives; but an illimitable sea of waving downs lay bathed in the amber light of Spain. Then, olive woods again, with a foam, of field-flowers spraying their gnarled feet, hedges of sweetbrier, tangled with tall, wild lilacs, and blossoming thorn. Beyond, high hills up which the Gloria stormed boldly, frightening the horses of a troop of laughing soldiers who rode without saddles; over stony roads, mere rough tracks drawn through meadows, where bulls grazed, and bellowed at the automobile; thus to a village which first showed itself like a white crown on a hilltop, and proved to be inhabited by women and children of surpassing beauty. Never were such eyes as those which looked from the faces in the quick-gathering crowd; eyes like black wells with fallen stars in their depths.[pg 206]Peasant houses by the wayside had thatched roofs, grey and glistening as silver plush; and outside ovens like huge cups turned upside down. The fields were gay with flowers; the distance floated in waves of azure gauze which touched the sky.On we swept, as though to find the joining place, but found only Ecija, the Town of the Seven Brigands, with its grand bridge and pearl-white Moorish mills, in the yellow, swift-running Genil.Kings had been lodged behind those brass-nailed doors and wrought-iron balconies, the Cherub said; and malefactors famed in history and ballad had swung from that tall gallows which caught the eye before Ecija's eight church towers. There had been famous fighting, too, by the river bank; but now the place slept, dreaming of peace, and the whirr of the mill-wheels sounded as comforting as the“chum-chum”of a motor that runs by night.So we flashed out of the Province of Cordoba into the Province of Seville, and tall, slender palms, rearing feathered heads among walnut trees and oaks, were signposts pointing south. It was early in April, but the air was the air of an English June, and I wondered to see men muffled in longcapas.“They do it to keep out the sun, as in the north to keep out the wind,”explained Pilar; but she only laughed when Dick asked why they shaved their donkeys' backs, why they put red and yellow muzzles on their donkeys' mouths, why they always carried plaid“railway rugs”on their beasts' backs or their own, and why their trousers and leggings were made in one piece?Beyond the olives, black clumps of umbrella pines flung ink-blots against the sky, and a purple carpet of budding heather was torn apart to let the road pass through. It was ideal motor-country, and Dick recalled with sneers the sixty horse-power man in Biarritz, who had feared the experiment.“The way is todowhat you want to do, and find out as you go along whether it can be done or not,”he soliloquized.I wondered if he were thinking of another difficult road, not to[pg 207]be travelled by motors—a road where perhaps Don Cipriano already knew the way.Larks sprang skyward from beds of wild flowers as we fled by, little fountains of music; tall cranes flew out of screening bushes beside bright streams; and blurring the distance before us, a mist of rain floated like a veil blown across the face of Spring.In sight of Carmona's splendid walls and ruined castle, the rain caught us; and for Pilar's sake we made the car cosey by fastening down the front glass and filling in the space with drawn canvas curtains.After this, our fleeting glimpses of pine and palm and olive were dimmed as we bowled along a sandy road, yellow as beaten gold. Now and again a patch of purple blossom burning through the mist sang a loud, exultant note of spring and love; and pretty orange-pickers, in men's jackets and brown trousers, warbled of the same theme in that soft Andaluza which is beyond all other languages of passion.The colour, and the music, and the day went to my head. I knew that I was young, and I wanted my chance of happiness—wanted it so much that I felt I could kill a man who dared try to snatch it from me.[pg 208]XXVIIn the Palace of the Kings“Now I've something serious to say, Don Ramón,”began the Cherub, when we had passed the first pink-and-white house which marked the suburbs of Seville.“You mustn't go to an hotel here. It would be dangerous. You must be our guest; and Señor Waring, too. I feel now as if our little play were true, and you were my son; while as for Señor Waring, we might have known him for years, might we not, Pilarcita?”“Of course. For my part, I'm ready to adopt him for a brother, too,”replied Pilar.I covered Dick's recoil at this blow by thanking the Cherub. He was more than kind, I said, but we couldn't think of—“You will not think of disappointing us,”broke in the dear brown fellow.“Could you have imagined that our only reason is to keep you out of danger? No. We're not so unselfish. We want you. Partings will come soon enough. We must have you with us, under our roof, at our table, as long as we can. Now you understand, you will say‘yes.’”“In my country,”said Dick, as a broad hint to me,“when we tell people we want them to visit us, we mean it; and I guess Colonel O'Donnel and Miss O'Donnel are the same sort.”Of course I wanted to say yes; and, of course, after this, I did say yes without further parleying.“Now begins the most critical time in this adventure of yours. Don Ramón,”the Cherub went on.“You see, as our place is only five miles outside Seville, we know many people; and[pg 209]though Carmona is seldom there with his mother, he certainly has acquaintances, and some of them may be ours too. You have travelled since Burgos as my son, though you wore his uniform only for two days; but you may be sure Carmona has been looking forward to shaking you off, once and for all, if you should venture to Seville to see the show ofSemana Santaas other tourists see it.”“He perhaps thinks that, because of our promise—which we've kept—he's shaken Ramón off already,”said Dick.“He knows better. The trick answered for a few hours; but his car broke down, and he had to accept our help. He said then that fate was against him; I heard it; and Carmona's a man to be actually superstitious about you, now. So far, he's kept the little señorita out of touch with you, but that's nearly all he has accomplished.”“Thanks to you both,”I cut in.“If it hadn't been for your help, I should have been‘pinched,’and hustled over the border long ago. I see that now; and though I should have come back and begun the chase again somehow, it would have been a thousand times more difficult.”“No use bothering about whatmighthave happened,”laughed Pilar.“Let's think of what did happen—and what will.”“Nevertheless,”said I,“the thought's often in my mind; what if we had missed Colonel and Miss O'Donnel at Burgos?”Dick chuckled; and when Pilar wanted to know what amused him, asked my permission to tell. I gave him leave; and with a memory for detail which I could have spared, to say nothing of an attempt at mimicry, he repeated, word for word, my objections to meeting the Irish friends of Angèle de la Mole.We were so intimate now that my point of view before knowing them did seem particularly comic, and Dick made the most of it.“Well, think what we have to thank you for!”exclaimed Pilar;“this delightful trip. If it hadn't been for you, Cristóbal would be here instead of with Angèle in Biarritz.”[pg 210]“Come back to common sense,”implored the Cherub,“and help me plan for the Cristóbal who is here. If he sits in our box for the processions, Carmona will see him and say to some officious person, very different from Rafael Calmenare,‘who is that young man with the O'Donnels?’And the officious person will answer,‘I never saw him in my life.’‘Ah,’the Duke will exclaim,‘isn't he Cristóbal O'Donnel?’‘Not at all,’will come the reply; and Carmona will proceed to make trouble.”“For you as well as for me; that's the worst of it,”said I.“We care nothing for that. It's of you we think,”said the Cherub. And because I knew it was true, more than ever it became my duty to think of him and his.“Of course I don't want to lose any chance of seeing Monica,”I said;“but on the days of the processions I shall walk about in the crowd and keep out of Carmona's way.”“As for us,”said Pilar,“we'll try for a box near the Duke's—though there may be nothing left, as the King's to be here and there's sure to be a crowd. I'll do my best to whisper to Lady Monica, or send her a note, or speak with my eyes if no more.”“You know how I depend on you,”I answered.“She may give you a letter, an answer to one which I hope she got at Manzanares.”“I'll be ready for the lightest hint,”said Pilar.“If she has a note for you, she'll show it behind her fan. Then I'll motion her to crumple it up and throw it on the floor as she goes out. If you don't appear in our society, the Duke will think perhaps that after all he's safe.”“No. We mustn't count on any such thing,”broke in her father.“If he can't get rid of you in one way, he'll try another; and there's an old saying which is still true: anything can happen in Spain, especially in the south. Carmona will be watching for you. You must be prepared for that.”“I shall be,”I said.“We'll all be,”Pilar finished.“Oh, there's the old Roman aqueduct! Isn't it splendid; and strong as if it had been built[pg 211]yesterday instead of in the days before the Goths. I love Seville—love every brick and stone of it, from the ruins of the Moorish wall and the Torre del Oro, and the glorious cathedral, to the old house in the Callo del Candilejo, where the witch-woman looked out and saw King Don Pedro fighting his duel. I don't believe any other place could make up to me for Seville.”By the side of the two-thousand-years-old-aqueduct ran a modern electric tramway; and one of the graceful arches made by Roman hands had been widened to let pass the railway line for Madrid. Farther on, Moorish houses with lofty miradors and beautiful capped windows were tucked between ugly new buildings, and across the shaded avenue of a green park was flung an extraordinary, four-winged spiral staircase of iron. I groaned at the monstrosity, saying that Pedro himself had never perpetrated an act more cruel; and the Cherub excused it sadly, by saying that it was convenient for the crowds to pass from one side of the street to the other, as I should see if I stayed beyond theSemana Santafor theferia.“Look at the Giralda, and you'll forget the iron bridge,”said Pilar. My eyes followed hers, and lit like winging birds upon a beautiful tower soaring delicately against the sky. So light, so fragile in effect was it, I felt that it might lean upon a cloud. In the golden light of afternoon the little pillars of old marble, the carved lozenges of stone, the arches of the horseshoe windows, the dainty carvings of the balconies, and all the marvellous ornamentation that broke the square surfaces of the tower, were rosy as if with reflections from a sunset sky.Itsbeauty was a Moorish poem in brick-work, such as no other hands save Moorish hands have ever made.I looked back until I lost sight of the Giralda, except the glittering figure of Faith on the top (strange symbol for a weather-vane), while threading through tortuous streets, mere strips of pavement veiled with blue shadow, and walled with secretive, flat-fronted houses, old and new, pearly with fresh whitewash, or painted pale lemon, faded orange, or a green ethereal as the[pg 212]tints of seaweed. Even at first sight the quaint town was singularly lovable, in its mingling of simplicity and mystery, and as Spanish in this mixture as in all things else.The tall, straight palms, with their tufted heads like falling fountains, clear against the sky, were Oriental, and seemed scarcely kin to the palms of Italy and Southern France. Nor were the narrow streets, through which we pounded over cobbles, like the narrow streets of Italian towns. They were Spanish; inexplicably but wholly Spanish, although Dick was not sure they did not recall bits of Venice,“just as you turn away from St. Mark's.”It was odd that shops so small could be so gay and attractive as these with their rows of painted fans, their draped mantillas, their bright sashes, foolish little tambourines, castanets tied with rosettes of ribbon in Spanish colours; their curious and vivid antique jewelry; theirsombreros cordobesesdisplayed in the same windows with silk hats from Bond Street; their flaming flowers, Moorish pottery, old lace, and cabinets of inlaid ebony and silver. And I knew that I should learn to love the sounds of Seville better than the sounds of London or other cities I had seen.Haunting sounds they were, these noises of a closely peopled old town, characteristic as those of Naples, not so strident as in Madrid; above all, the sound of bells, ringing, booming, chiming, so continuously that soon they would affect the senses like a heavy perfume always present. One would cease to hear them, and be startled only if their clamouring tongues were silenced.In the streets, where the processions ofSemana Santawould pass, already hundreds of rush-bottomed chairs were ranged in front of houses and shops, piled in confusion, which would be reduced to order for to-morrow, Palm Sunday. Beyond, in the Plaza de la Constitución—scene in old days of the bull-fight andauto-da-fé,—many men were busy putting the last touches on the crimson velvet and gold draperies of the royal box, pounding barriers into place in the tribune in front of the silver-like chasing of the Casa del Ayuntamiento's Plateresque façade,[pg 213]or arranging row after row of chairs in the open space opposite, leaving an aisle for the procession to pass between.“Now there is something to do before we drive home to the Cortijo de Santa Rufina,”said the Cherub.“I must see about getting a box in the tribune for the week; I must find out whether Carmona did come in by train last night. Don Ramón hasn't suggested this plan, but I think he would not dislike it.”“I meant to drop out of the car, to see what I could learn myself, and join you afterwards at home,”I said.“But you can get hold of things better than I, a stranger, can.”“You must remain a stranger,”he supplemented my words.“If your chauffeur will stop at the top of this narrow street, I'll walk down it a few doors to my club, and ask for the latest news. Carmona doesn't honour his house in Seville too often with his presence, though his mother is here every season, and his arrival will be the talk of the club. I can take steps too, about a box for the show. I won't keep you long; but you'd better wait at the Café Perla. Pilar can't go there without me. Oh, you may smile; but remember we're in Spain. She must wait at the house of a friend.”The Cherub's idea of a“little while”and a“long while”were always rather vague, and apt to dovetail confusingly one into another; but knowing what it was his aim to accomplish, I did not grudge the fifty minutes before his ample form and smiling face appeared in the doorway of the café.“It's all right,”were his first words.“I felt my luck wouldn't desert me. Who do you suppose”—and he turned to Pilar, who had come on with him—“was the first man I ran across? No other than Don Esteban Villaroya.”Pilar looked a little frightened.“But he's a friend of the Duke's. Won't that make it awkward?”“No; all the better. I told him Cristóbal and my daughter and I had motored from Burgos with an American friend, an important writer for the papers, who was going to pay us a visit. Not an untrue word to trouble my confessor with. Don[pg 214]Esteban may or may not mention our meeting to Carmona when he dines with him this evening.”“Dines with him? Oh, I hope that won't make mischief.”“It won't. Carmona arrived late last night, with his mother and guests. It seems preparations have been going on in the house for the past fortnight; and the first thing Carmona and his mother did was to send out half a dozen invitations for dinner this evening. Afterwards, he managed, probably through royal influence, to get permission from the Governor to take the party into theAlcázarby moonlight, and he's going to have coloured illuminations, music, and Spanish dances given by professionals in the costumes of different provinces. A grand idea, Don Esteban thinks.”“But why is he doing it?”asked Pilar, thoughtfully.“María purísima! It isn't as if he were an impulsive or hospitable man, fond of getting up impromptu entertainments. This is done in a hurry. What can be his object? for he always has an object.”“To amuse Lady Monica, who's not pleased with him so far,”explained the Cherub.“And as he's a good Catholic, at least in appearance, to-night or the night after will be his last chance to entertain tillSemana Santais over.”“Somehow, I don't feel that's reason enough,”said Pilar, looking so troubled that I felt new stirrings of anxiety, and must have shown it; for Pilar exclaimed that she was a“little beast”to worry me.“You haven't worried me,”I protested.“Still, I think I'll go to that entertainment at theAlcázar.”Pilar and her father stared.“I see what you mean,”said the girl.“You hope to walk in and meet Lady Monica. But you can't, because theAlcázar's closed to the public after sunset. It will only be open for the Duke as a favour, because he's rich and important, and care will be taken that no outsider slips in.”“If there should be one more guitarist than he hired, do you think it would be noticed?”I asked, smiling.Pilar clapped her hands.“You're a true lover, Don Ramón,”[pg 215]she exclaimed.“Ay de mi!Nobody will ever love a little dark thing like myself, as Lady Monica is loved. I must be satisfied with the affections of my relations, and a few others, I suppose.”Great eyes lifted sadly ceiling-ward as she spoke, then cast down with distracting play of long curled lashes. Spanish after all to her finger-tips, this María del Pilar Inés, despite her Irish quickness. Poor Dick!“You believe I could manage it, then?”“I believe youwill. Señor Waring has told me about the masked ball, and how you played Romeo to somebody's Juliet.”“The difficulty will be to get hold of theimpresario.”Pilar looked at her watch.“They'll know at theAlcázarwho's been engaged. There's an hour and a half yet before closing time.”“What if you and I take a stroll through?”suggested Dick.“We'll all take a stroll through,”said Pilar,“and papa shall find out. You know, he can always make everybody tell him anything in five minutes. Even Cristóbal and I have never been able to keep a secret from him. If I'd planned to elope, he would only have to whisper and smile, for me to tell all, even if it meant my going into a convent directly after.”“Yes, we must go to theAlcázarnow, or it will be too late,”said the Cherub, with an indulgent twinkle at his spoiled daughter.The car took us to the gate of theAlcázar, a gate of that unsuggestive Moorish simplicity which purposely hid all splendours of decoration from any save favoured eyes. The guardian knew and evidently respected Colonel O'Donnel; but with apologies which comprehended the whole party, he regretted that he could not let us in. The King was to arrive in a few days, returning from his yachting trip to the Canaries, and would live in theAlcázarwhich was being got ready for him. From now until the day after his departure, theAlcázarwas to be closed to the public.This was just, and as it should be, admitted the Cherub; but[pg 216]we were not the public. We were special ones, even as special as the Duke of Carmona who would entertain his friends there that evening. Surely the guardian must know that the O'Donnel family was on terms of friendship with the Governor of theAlcázar, who would suffer severe pains of the heart if he heard that such visitors had been turned away. Thus the good Cherub continued to whisper. And whether or no coin changed hands I cannot tell; but certain it is that in less than the five minutes allowed by Pilar for the working of her father's fascinations, we were inside the forbidden precincts, accompanied by a lamb-like attendant.It was from him that we must learn what we wished to know; but it would be unwise to betray a premature thirst for information on any subject save the history or beauties of theAlcázar. Asking a question now and then of our guide, we wandered frompatiotopatio, from room to room of that wonderful royal dwelling once called“the house of Cæsar.”Many a rude shock and vicissitude had it sustained when Goths fought for it with Romans, when Moors seized it from Christians, when Christians won it back, and conducted themselves within its jewelled walls in ways unworthy of their faith and boasted chivalry, yet the beauties which Pedro the Cruel restored in admiring imitation of the Alhambra, glowed still with undimmed splendour, in the sunshine of this twentieth century afternoon.If I had not been preoccupied by my own private and extremely modern anxieties, I should have let imagination work the spell it longed to work, and make of me some humble character gliding shadow-like, but ever observant, through tale after tale of the“Arabian Nights.”In just such a palace as this had the Seven Calenders lost each an eye; behind any one of these fretted arches might one come upon a king, half man, half jet-black marble. The most captious of genies could have found no fault with the Hall of the Ambassadors save the absence of the roc's egg; and despite my impatience the storied enchantment of the place soon had me in its grip.[pg 217]Scheherezade, I said to myself, could have invented no tales to surpass in thrilling interest the scenes which had been enacted here. The drama of widowed Egilona and her handsome Moorish prince, ruined by her love; the tragedy of Abu Said, done to death by Pedro for the sake of his“fair ruby, great as a racket ball,”and the store of gems for which men still search secretly in hidden nooks of theAlcázar; the murder of the young Master of Santiago, who came to Pedro as an honoured guest; the love story of Maria de Padilla, whose spirit, the guardian whispered, could be seen to this day flitting in moonlight and shadow along her favourite garden walks, or trailing white robes through rooms which had been hers.“Perhaps, as the moon is full, Maria will appear to-night in the garden to the Duke of Carmona and his guests,”said Pilar; and I knew from this preface that our probation was at an end.The attendant laughed.“Perhaps,”he replied;“but I think there will be too much noise to please her. The Duke has engaged a troupe of dancers and guitarists to entertain his friends.”“No doubt King Don Pedro used to amuse his in the same way,”remarked the Cherub,“employing the forerunners of Ramiro Olivero and his school maybe.”“It is Ramiro Olivero who performs to-night,”said the attendant, playing into our hands.“Of course! He is the favoured one in such affairs,”assented the Cherub.“It ought to be a pretty entertainment, and interesting to the Duke's English guests. It will be somewhere in the gardens?”“In the lower garden of the Moorish kiosk,”was the unsuspecting reply.Pilar looked at me, and her eyes said,“The key you wanted is in your hand.”[pg 218]XXVIIMoonlight in the GardenWhen the Cherub dies and is gathered to his Irish and Spanish fathers (far distant be the day!) he will not know a happy moment in Paradise unless he is doing something ingenuously kind for somebody. It is my conviction that he will have to be made a guardian angel; and I mentioned this theory to him as he took me to the house of Ramiro Olivero, ex-bull-fighter, present professor of Spanish dancing.The others were waiting in the car, as, according to the Cherub's plan of campaign, he and I were to visit Olivero alone.We climbed many stairs to the flat where the celebrated man lives and conducts his school for dancing. He it was who came to the door, and it was a sight worth seeing to watch his somewhat hard, middle-aged features relax in response to cherubic murmurings.Colonel O'Donnel remembered Señor Olivero since the time when he was abanderillero; oh, incomparably the most brilliantbanderilleroof his day. Then, afterwards, what triumphs as atorero! Ah, that was something for an old admirer to remember. Not to regret, naturally, since the señor was as great an artist in his present profession as in that other doubtless sacrificed to family affections.This gentleman whom he (Colonel O'Donnel) now ventured to introduce was from England, travelling with a friend from the States who wrote articles on Spain for well-known journals. The American could speak no Spanish, but with the gentleman[pg 219]from England it was like the native tongue. Therefore it was he who most often attended important ceremonies, and made notes for his friend to work up into articles. This entertainment in which Señor Olivero was assisting the Duke of Carmona, for instance; it would be all that was characteristic of Spain, as well as beautiful. If the señor would allow the gentleman from England to enter theAlcázaras one of his guitarists, an article could be made for the great American newspapers which would not only be a credit to the journalist, but would widely advertise the skill of Señor Olivero and his pupils.If every man has his price, it was not derogatory to his merits that these pearls of flattery should be the price which bought Olivero. Not a penny was to be paid for the favour. When the word“money”was hinted, rather than spoken, the ex-hero of the bull-ring waved it away with a superb gesture. But he would be glad to see the articles when they appeared; and this was promised, for Dick must write them for the neglected papers he was supposed to represent.In return for the promise (and the compliments), it was arranged that I should present myself at his house about ten o'clock (the dance was timed to begin at 10.45), there dress for my part, and be furnished with a guitar. Once inside theAlcázarI need not play upon the instrument; but, said Olivero, it was well that I should be able to do so if called upon. My costume was to be a shortchulojacket and tight-hipped, loose-legged grey trousers, with a low-collared, unstarched shirt, and a broad-brimmed grey sombrero de Cordoba. With this hat, well tipped over my eyes, in moonlight or even spasmodic rose-and-gold bursts of coloured fire, recognition would be impossible at a distance; and I meant to keep at a distance from all the Duke's party—with one exception.By the time the plan was mapped out, it was nearly seven o'clock, but the O'Donnels still urged me to dine at the Cortijo de Santa Rufina. The Gloria would eat up the six miles distance in ten minutes; I could bathe and dress before 8.15, when dinner[pg 220]would be ready (a telegram had been sent to the servants from Cordoba), and rested and refreshed, I could start for Seville in the car again at half-past nine.So we flashed out across the Guadalquivir, by way of the bridge of Isabel Segunda, into that strange suburb which gave Trajan birth, and my family their name; ancient Trajana, now Triana, town of potters, picadores, and gypsies.Dark-browed boys playedtorerosto our car as bull, their coatsmuletas, sticks theirbanderillas, yelling and springing lithely aside as the enemy rushed on them. Girls, handsome as Carmen, flung us flowers, staring boldly eye to eye; and this was my welcome to the place near which the Casa Trianas had once lived and thought themselves great!Almost could I have seen the towers of the old house—now the property of the King—as we passed into open country again; but I did not speak, nor did the others, though the thought in my mind must have been in Pilar's and Colonel O'Donnel's.Five miles more, through falling dusk and sweet country scents and we turned off the main road into another, gleaming white as a path of snow in the opal twilight. Then, in a wide-reaching plantation of olives, spraying silver on a ruddy soil where glimmered irrigation tanks and grinding mills, we came upon a large, irregular clump of white buildings grouped together, and made one by a high wall with an open belfry at one corner.“Here we are at home!”exclaimed the Cherub with a contented sigh, as he gently touched Ropes' shoulder.“Welcome, dear friends, to the Cortijo de Santa Rufina. It, and all within its walls, is at your disposition.”We drove in through a wide gate in the outer wall, where there was a clamour of greeting from the steward, many servants, and more dogs, dogs of all races, who selected Pilar for their wildest demonstrations. In a second she was out of the car, and half drowned in a wave of tumultuous doghood. Laughing, shaking hands with the servants, patting or suppressing greyhounds, collies, setters, retrievers, she had never seemed so charming.[pg 221]This was therealPilar—Pilar at home; the Pilar it would be next to impossible to uproot from such associations. Again, poor Dick! And now he no longer tried to hide the loving admiration in his eyes. I think he would even have done his best to fondle a wild bull or two of her acquaintance had they been among the friends who gave her welcome.Away boomed the Gloria to the stables—the sole garage at the Cortijo—while we were bidden through the Moorish entrance-porch and wrought-ironcancelainto apatiosurrounded on all sides by an arcade, roofed with green and brown tiling. The supporting pillars were of pale pink brick, not marble, and the pavement was of brick also, interset with a pattern of small blue tiles. But the tiles were old and good; from a carved stone basin in the middle of the court sprang the tall crystal stem of a fountain, blossoming into diamonds; pearly arum lilies, pink azaleas, and pale green hydrangeas bloomed in huge white and blue and yellow pots from Triana, of the same beautiful shapes made before Santa Justa and Santa Rufina knew they were saints, and undertook to keep the Giralda from falling.The windows leading into the rooms surrounding thepatiowere large as doors, and all were hospitably open, giving through thin curtains glimpses of old furniture carefully grouped to please a woman's dainty taste. Pilar again—always Pilar! Here were herlaresandpenates; and she was a goddess among lesser household gods. I knew that it would be safer for Dick to say a hasty good-bye upon the threshold; but I knew also that no power on earth could force him to do it.“This is only a farm, you know,”said the girl, meekly, all the while dimpling with pride in her home and what she had made it;“for we are only farmers, aren't we, Papa.”Our rooms—Dick's and mine—were not overstocked with furniture; but there were two or three things for which an antiquary would have pawned his soul. On one side, our windows looked upon thepatio; on the other, we gazed through iron bars over olives and meadows where grain was green. There was no[pg 222]sound save the tinkling rain of the fountain, and now and then the sleepy note of a bird, or a far-away lowing of cattle—perhaps the welcoming bellow of Vivillo, the brown bull which was the sole possession of Carmona coveted by Pilar.The two servants who waited at dinner were wreathed in smiles at seeing again their master and mistress; and their occasional furtive glances of interest in my direction made me wonder if they had not received mysterious instructions as to how they must answer any questions concerning me. But, whatever those instructions might be, I was sure they would be loyally carried out; for the Cherub is a man servants would obey through torture until death, if these days were as the old.At half-past nine Ropes was ready to spin me back into Seville. We arrived earlier than need be; and having made an appointment to meet at a quiet hotel, where Ropes would await me from half-past eleven till half-past twelve, I decided to walk past Carmona's house and reconnoitre.I knew where to find it, in the Calle de las Dueñas; but if I had hoped for a tell-tale glimpse within, as in a London or Parisian mansion, I was disappointed. Once a Moorish palace, it showed a closed, secretive front to the narrow street. But I knew, for I had read, that within there were six courtyards, ninety marble pillars, half a dozen fountains, a garden of orange and magnolia trees, with myrtle hedges clipped to represent the ducal arms; that there were vast treasures of statuary, pictures by Velasquez, Murillo, and Alonso Cano; gold-inlaid plate armour; tapestry from the Netherlands not to be surpassed at the Royal Palace at Madrid.I knew that these splendours would loom large in the eyes of Lady Vale-Avon, and might count for something even with Monica, who confessed to a love of all things beautiful. I thought of the famous Carmona jewels, which would belong to the wife of the Duke, while she lived, as they had belonged to generations of Duchesses. Above all, I thought of the incomparable Blanca Laguna pearl and its glistening maids of honour, which, by this[pg 223]time perhaps, had been shown to Monica. There were few girls in Spain, or in the world, I remembered hearing my mother say, who could resist that pearl as a bride. And now it was offered to Monica, a penniless girl of eighteen, whose beauty formed her sole dowry.There, behind the cold reserve of those white walls with the shut, brass-studded doors and barred windows, she was being fêted by the Duke, dining on gold plate, in a tapestried room fragrant with orange flowers. I could see the pictures. I could see the look in Carmona's eyes as they turned to her, saying,“all this is yours if you will have it.”And Carmona's eyes were handsome eyes; I had to admit that, in justice.Would she hold true to me—true to a man with no palaces, no lands, no priceless pearls, and only half as many hundreds a year as her other lover had thousands? Would she be able to resist her mother, now that mother had seen with her own eyeshowmuch there was to fight for and to win?The question would come. But with it came a vision of Monica herself, pure and sweet as beautiful, loyal and loving as she was lovely. And I said to myself,“Yes, she will be true.”It was with the clear ringing of these words in my mind that I turned my back upon the house of Carmona.Once I had passed into theAlcázarwith Olivero's band of dancers and guitarists I was free to do as I pleased. And I pleased to escape from my laughing, chattering companions before the arrival of the Duke and his guests, and the illuminations in their honour. There was no better place to wait and watch for the opportunity I wanted, than in the mock-Moorish kiosk at the end of the lower garden. From there I could see without being seen; and the moment a chance came I should be ready to take it.It was early still, but Olivero lost no time in marshalling his little army into place, that they might make a good effect as atableau vivantwhen the great people came. He seated his six men with guitars, their sombreros at precisely the right angle on[pg 224]their glossy black heads, and in a row of chairs in front six young women in black dresses with black lace mantillas, the red and yellow ribbons of their castanets already in their hands. Then, at intervals, he grouped the dancers, youths, and pretty girls, carefully dressed in the costumes of different provinces, making a bouquet of bright colours in the light of a few concealed lamps which supplemented the silver radiance of the moon, now almost at the zenith.The minutes passed. The dancers talked in subdued tones which scarcely disturbed the nightingales. A breeze rustled the crisp leaves of the orange trees and myrtle hedges; far away the voice of the watchman told the hour of eleven, echoed by the chiming bells of a church clock; and the last stroke had not sounded when there was a burst of merry voices in a distant avenue. Carmona and his friends had come—late, of course—or there could have been no Andalucíans among them; and suddenly, as if on a signal, the gardens pulsed with rose-coloured light. In the pink blaze I saw Monica, slender and fair as a lily, in a white dress sparkling with silver; but I had only time to see that she walked beside Carmona, when the rose flame died down and left the garden pure and peaceful under the moon.For an instant the soft light seemed darkness, and I lost the white figure. When it sprang to my eyes again in a sharp emerald flash, while all the hidden fountains in the garden walks spouted jewels, others were grouped round it; only the gold crown of rippling hair shone out clear as a star for me among other women's dark coils and braids.Old ebony chairs with crimson velvet cushions and the Carmona arms in heavy gilding, had been sent to theAlcázarfrom the Duke's house, for the entertainment. The party sat down, and the dancing began, to theflamencomusic of guitars and the clacking of castanets; thefandango, thebolero, themalagueña, thechaquera vella; all the classical dances of old Spain, and each one a variant on the theme of love, the woman coy, coquettishly[pg 225]retreating; the man persuading or demanding, the woman yielding in passionate abandonment at last.In the midst of asevillanaI came out from the shadows of the kiosk and walked without a sound of rattling pebble or cracking twig, along a path which the moon had not yet found.The high backs of the ebony chairs were turned to me. I could not even see the heads of the people who sat in them; but I had watched them take their places, and I knew that Monica's chair was the outside one on the end, at the right.Everyone was absorbed in watching the dance. As it approached its tempestuous climax of joy and love, I moved into the deep shadow of a magnolia tree, close to Monica—so close that, reaching out from behind the round trunk which screened me, I touched her hand.With a start, she glanced up, expecting perhaps to find that the breeze had blown a rose-branch across her fingers. Instead, she saw my face; for I had taken off the wide-brimmed grey sombrero and bared my head to her.For a second she looked straight into my eyes, as if she doubted that she saw aright. Then, an unbelievable thing happened. Her eyes grew cold as glass. Her lips tightened into a line which I had not dreamed their soft curves could take. Her youth and beauty froze under my gaze. With a haughty lifting of her brows, and an indescribable movement of her shoulder which could mean nothing but scornful indifference, she turned away as if impatient at having lost a gesture of the dancers.Astounded, I stepped back; and so vast was the chasm of my amazement that I floundered in it bewildered, unable even to suffer.Then came a pang of such pain and anger as I had never known—anger not against the girl, but against Carmona; and the knife which pierced me was dipped in the poison of jealously. My impulse was to leap out from the shadow and strangle him. My hands tingled for his neck, and through the drumming of the blood in my ears I could hear the crack his spine would make[pg 226]as I twisted it. For that instant I was a madman. Then, something that was myself conquered.Horror of the savage thing just born in me overflowed in an icy flood that swept it, drowning, out of my soul. But never again, so long as I may live, shall I condemn a man who kills another in one blind moment of rage.Even when the red glaze was gone from before my eyes, I could not trust myself to stand there, looking at Carmona as he smiled and patronized the dancers by clapping his hands. I turned away, not stopping until I had regained the kiosk.There I sat down, elbows on knees, head in my hands, trying to analyse that look on Monica's face, trying to tell myself that I must have mis-read it—that such an expression as I imagined could not have been there for me.Perhaps, as I suddenly appeared behind a veil of flickering moonlight and shadow she had not known who I was. She had mistaken me for some impertinent stranger, and rather than give an alarm, she had hoped that a frown might rid her of the intruder. Then, I had gone without giving her a second chance to recognize me.After a few minutes of such reflections, I almost persuaded myself that I had been a fool and was wholly to blame for what I suffered. At least, I said, I owed it to her to make sure that the look had been for me, and the suspense must end to-night. I would know, even if I made her answer me under the eyes of Carmona and the others.But a moment later I saw that I need not be driven to such extremes.The first part of the dance was over; the Duke and his guests were walking through the gardens in the interval. They were coming my way—coming to the kiosk. As they advanced, I retreated into shadow. I let the group linger at the kiosk, admiring the beautifulazulejos; I let them move on; then, as Monica loitered purposely behind the others, drooping and evidently sad, I put myself in front of her.[pg 227]“Monica,”I said,“what has happened? You—”The girl flung up her head, and though there was a glitter of tears in her eyes and her face was white under the moon, she stared defiance.“Don't speak to me,”she said.“I never wish to see you again. I'm going to marry the Duke of Carmona.”

[pg 201]XXVWhat Cordoba LackedThrough a flowery field of cloth-of-gold we came, while the afternoon was young, into Cordoba—“Kartuba the Important,”lying like a grave entombing its dead glory, prone at the foot of tombstone mountains.After the dazzle of wild-flowers shining in the sun, and the ozone of country breezes, a sudden entrance into the network of narrow streets was like being thrown, without a clue, into the Minotaur's dark labyrinth.I had thought that no town could have narrower streets than Toledo; but the streets of Cordoba were mere slits between house-walls. As we scraped through on the car, Dick likened the town to a huge white cake divided into slices by a sharp knife, but left in shape with only one or two pieces pulled out to loosen the mass.Still, the stone-paved slits contrived to make pictures; with here and there a pair of splendid Moorish doors, a row of ancient eastern-patterned windows, or a fairy glimpse of a sunlitpatiobeyond a tunnel of shadow; a fountain spraying jewels, a waving of palms and glow of hanging roses.“She's sure to be here,”I said to myself, as we stopped at last before the principal hotel.“Since the journey's supposed to be a pleasure trip, Carmona's bound to give his guests time to see the sights of Cordoba.”But nothing was known of the Duke and his party at the hotel, although there was a rumour that an automobile had passed through the town in the morning.[pg 202]The Cherub, consulted, was of opinion that if Carmona's car had come, it must have remained.“There'd be nowhere for them to stop afterwards short of Seville,”he said,“unless Carmona, and that's near Seville. They must be lurking in Cordoba—perhaps at the Marqués de Villa-blanca's, who's a friend of the Duke's. We shall come across our lovely little lady presently, if we get about in the town; in thePaseo del GranCapitán, or thePatio de los Naranjos, or the cathedral, or by the ruins of theAlcázar.”“Besides, I thought you'd made up your mind not to worry till we got to Seville,”said Dick.“So I had,”I answered.“But I have a feeling as if something had gone wrong.”“Any reason for the feeling—except the feeling itself?”asked Dick.I shook my head, not caring to mention the letter that might have gone astray.“Nothing I can define.”“Then I guess it's all right, and you're developing nerves.”“I knowjusthow he feels,”said Pilar, with a reproachful look at Dick, with whom she was at odds since the episode of the bull.“There was an expression in Lady Monica's eyes, wasn't there, at Manzanares, as if she were sad? Oh, I saw it; and they wouldn't let me get within whispering distance of her afterwards, or I should have found out what it meant. I had the idea that they wereparticularlyanxious to keep me away, and I wondered if there were any new reason. I'm not surprised that Don Ramón is worried. One can see that Señor Waring's never been in love!”“Oh, haven't I?”exclaimed Dick; which, of course made matters worse; and to mend them, he went on blundering. "What doyouknow about the symptoms?"“Girls are born knowing things it takes men years to learn,”said Pilar.It did not allay my anxiety that she should have noticed what I had noticed. But I clung to the Cherub's assurance, hoping,[pg 203]when we had set out on our explorations, to meet her, to see her face light up with the radiance I knew.But there were no strangers save ourselves, and a few wandering Americans under the palms and orange trees of thepaseodedicated to the memory ofEl GranCapitán.We wandered—Pilar keeping at my side, and leaving Dick to her father—from gate to gate outside the Mosque-Cathedral which once made Cordoba the Mecca of Europe; gazing up at the tremendous mass of honey-coloured masonry rising like a vast fortress from its buttresses of stone; lingering under the bell-tower of thePuerta del Perdonbecause Pilar“felt as if something would happen there.”But nothing did happen; and we went to face the blighting of renewed hopes in the Court of Oranges, whose melancholy charm and sensuous perfume was sad as the song of a nightingale when summer is dying.She was not there; nor could we find her in the marble forest of the pillared cathedral, though, while Dick and Pilar made up their differences over the jewelled mosaics, I searched for her.“I tell you, Ramón, there's some satisfaction in feeling that you're looking at the best things the world's got to show,”said Dick, almost in my ear,“and there are lots of them in your country, especially in Cordoba, though I suppose the Moors would weep to see it now. But you don't seem to be enjoying them, in spite of risking such a lot to come where they are.”I didn't remind him that the risk I ran was for the one best thing in all the world, which was only temporarily in my country, and that my depression came because it was not at the moment visible. But Pilar did not need reminding, and in the way of sweet women, tried to“keep my mind occupied”by talking history and legend, confusing them deliciously, and defending her stories of beautiful Egilona and fair Florinda by saying that, anyhow, nobody cared whether they were true or not. Besides, whatwashistory, since dull people were continually discovering that none of the best bits had ever happened?“I choose to believe in Florinda,”she cried,“and all the other[pg 204]beautiful women who influenced kings, and made wars, and upset countries. Without them and their love-stories, history would be like faded tapestry without gold threads.”So Dick ceased to argue, and in silence we left the gem-like perfection of the third Mihrab, to wander once more through the wilderness of gleaming columns that were now like over-arching trees, now like falling fountains.No dusky vista out of those many changing ones framed the figure I longed to see; and when we had left the cathedral and climbed to the gardens and towers where stood once theAlcázarof Gothic and Moorish glories, it was the same story of disappointment. Only the Americans we had seen in thepaseowere there, more interested than I in such fragments as they could catch of Pilar's tales. Dungeons where Theodofredo had been blinded, and Witica the wicked had paid for his crimes; vanished halls where Rodrigo reigned and loved before the dark day beside the Guadalete lost the crown for him and Christendom; what did they hold of interest since the garden of lilacs and roses which covered their ruins was empty of one Presence?When we had seen everything, I left my friends in the hall of the hotel choosing curios from glass cases, and went out again in search of news concerning the automobile which had passed in the morning.Presumably it had attracted a crowd, yet no one seemed to know anything of it until at last, just as I was giving up hope, I met an old man who had seen a large grey motor-car at the railway station. A few minutes later, I had solved the mystery of the Lecomte's disappearance. It had arrived early; its passengers had been conducted round Cordoba in the smallest possible time by Carmona; it had then been driven to the station; and with its late occupants had gone to Seville by the same train.There might have been several motives for this move. The car might have been partially disabled, not having been properly prepared at Manzanares; or Carmona might have determined to thwart the destiny which so far had kept me near him. I was[pg 205]inclined to accept the latter theory, and it did not tend to promote my peace of mind.I was glad to hear, however, that the train was not due at Seville until late that evening. If we made an early start next day, it was not likely that the situation could be much changed before I arrived, free of obligations to the Duchess.Of course, said Pilar, before I had time to ask, they would be ready to start early, oh, very early. It would be beautiful to be in the country before the sun had drunk up the dew on the grass, and withered the roses of dawn in the clouds. There was no fear of cold now that we were in dear Andalucía. Yes! we would have coffee at six, and leave at half-past.I should not have dared suggest such a trial of moral courage, but I accepted the sacrifice; so the roses of morning which Pilar loved still bloomed in the garden of the sky, and trailed their reflection in the Guadalquivir, as we rolled over the old bridge and past the white, Moorish hills.A morning in Paradise could scarcely be more beautiful; and the pinky-purple blossoms of thealamoshimmering in a rosy mist against dark cypress trees, or mingling with the white lace of hawthorn was a colour-symphony of Spring.Dignified country houses no longer raised brown-tiled roofs from among groves of olives; but an illimitable sea of waving downs lay bathed in the amber light of Spain. Then, olive woods again, with a foam, of field-flowers spraying their gnarled feet, hedges of sweetbrier, tangled with tall, wild lilacs, and blossoming thorn. Beyond, high hills up which the Gloria stormed boldly, frightening the horses of a troop of laughing soldiers who rode without saddles; over stony roads, mere rough tracks drawn through meadows, where bulls grazed, and bellowed at the automobile; thus to a village which first showed itself like a white crown on a hilltop, and proved to be inhabited by women and children of surpassing beauty. Never were such eyes as those which looked from the faces in the quick-gathering crowd; eyes like black wells with fallen stars in their depths.[pg 206]Peasant houses by the wayside had thatched roofs, grey and glistening as silver plush; and outside ovens like huge cups turned upside down. The fields were gay with flowers; the distance floated in waves of azure gauze which touched the sky.On we swept, as though to find the joining place, but found only Ecija, the Town of the Seven Brigands, with its grand bridge and pearl-white Moorish mills, in the yellow, swift-running Genil.Kings had been lodged behind those brass-nailed doors and wrought-iron balconies, the Cherub said; and malefactors famed in history and ballad had swung from that tall gallows which caught the eye before Ecija's eight church towers. There had been famous fighting, too, by the river bank; but now the place slept, dreaming of peace, and the whirr of the mill-wheels sounded as comforting as the“chum-chum”of a motor that runs by night.So we flashed out of the Province of Cordoba into the Province of Seville, and tall, slender palms, rearing feathered heads among walnut trees and oaks, were signposts pointing south. It was early in April, but the air was the air of an English June, and I wondered to see men muffled in longcapas.“They do it to keep out the sun, as in the north to keep out the wind,”explained Pilar; but she only laughed when Dick asked why they shaved their donkeys' backs, why they put red and yellow muzzles on their donkeys' mouths, why they always carried plaid“railway rugs”on their beasts' backs or their own, and why their trousers and leggings were made in one piece?Beyond the olives, black clumps of umbrella pines flung ink-blots against the sky, and a purple carpet of budding heather was torn apart to let the road pass through. It was ideal motor-country, and Dick recalled with sneers the sixty horse-power man in Biarritz, who had feared the experiment.“The way is todowhat you want to do, and find out as you go along whether it can be done or not,”he soliloquized.I wondered if he were thinking of another difficult road, not to[pg 207]be travelled by motors—a road where perhaps Don Cipriano already knew the way.Larks sprang skyward from beds of wild flowers as we fled by, little fountains of music; tall cranes flew out of screening bushes beside bright streams; and blurring the distance before us, a mist of rain floated like a veil blown across the face of Spring.In sight of Carmona's splendid walls and ruined castle, the rain caught us; and for Pilar's sake we made the car cosey by fastening down the front glass and filling in the space with drawn canvas curtains.After this, our fleeting glimpses of pine and palm and olive were dimmed as we bowled along a sandy road, yellow as beaten gold. Now and again a patch of purple blossom burning through the mist sang a loud, exultant note of spring and love; and pretty orange-pickers, in men's jackets and brown trousers, warbled of the same theme in that soft Andaluza which is beyond all other languages of passion.The colour, and the music, and the day went to my head. I knew that I was young, and I wanted my chance of happiness—wanted it so much that I felt I could kill a man who dared try to snatch it from me.[pg 208]XXVIIn the Palace of the Kings“Now I've something serious to say, Don Ramón,”began the Cherub, when we had passed the first pink-and-white house which marked the suburbs of Seville.“You mustn't go to an hotel here. It would be dangerous. You must be our guest; and Señor Waring, too. I feel now as if our little play were true, and you were my son; while as for Señor Waring, we might have known him for years, might we not, Pilarcita?”“Of course. For my part, I'm ready to adopt him for a brother, too,”replied Pilar.I covered Dick's recoil at this blow by thanking the Cherub. He was more than kind, I said, but we couldn't think of—“You will not think of disappointing us,”broke in the dear brown fellow.“Could you have imagined that our only reason is to keep you out of danger? No. We're not so unselfish. We want you. Partings will come soon enough. We must have you with us, under our roof, at our table, as long as we can. Now you understand, you will say‘yes.’”“In my country,”said Dick, as a broad hint to me,“when we tell people we want them to visit us, we mean it; and I guess Colonel O'Donnel and Miss O'Donnel are the same sort.”Of course I wanted to say yes; and, of course, after this, I did say yes without further parleying.“Now begins the most critical time in this adventure of yours. Don Ramón,”the Cherub went on.“You see, as our place is only five miles outside Seville, we know many people; and[pg 209]though Carmona is seldom there with his mother, he certainly has acquaintances, and some of them may be ours too. You have travelled since Burgos as my son, though you wore his uniform only for two days; but you may be sure Carmona has been looking forward to shaking you off, once and for all, if you should venture to Seville to see the show ofSemana Santaas other tourists see it.”“He perhaps thinks that, because of our promise—which we've kept—he's shaken Ramón off already,”said Dick.“He knows better. The trick answered for a few hours; but his car broke down, and he had to accept our help. He said then that fate was against him; I heard it; and Carmona's a man to be actually superstitious about you, now. So far, he's kept the little señorita out of touch with you, but that's nearly all he has accomplished.”“Thanks to you both,”I cut in.“If it hadn't been for your help, I should have been‘pinched,’and hustled over the border long ago. I see that now; and though I should have come back and begun the chase again somehow, it would have been a thousand times more difficult.”“No use bothering about whatmighthave happened,”laughed Pilar.“Let's think of what did happen—and what will.”“Nevertheless,”said I,“the thought's often in my mind; what if we had missed Colonel and Miss O'Donnel at Burgos?”Dick chuckled; and when Pilar wanted to know what amused him, asked my permission to tell. I gave him leave; and with a memory for detail which I could have spared, to say nothing of an attempt at mimicry, he repeated, word for word, my objections to meeting the Irish friends of Angèle de la Mole.We were so intimate now that my point of view before knowing them did seem particularly comic, and Dick made the most of it.“Well, think what we have to thank you for!”exclaimed Pilar;“this delightful trip. If it hadn't been for you, Cristóbal would be here instead of with Angèle in Biarritz.”[pg 210]“Come back to common sense,”implored the Cherub,“and help me plan for the Cristóbal who is here. If he sits in our box for the processions, Carmona will see him and say to some officious person, very different from Rafael Calmenare,‘who is that young man with the O'Donnels?’And the officious person will answer,‘I never saw him in my life.’‘Ah,’the Duke will exclaim,‘isn't he Cristóbal O'Donnel?’‘Not at all,’will come the reply; and Carmona will proceed to make trouble.”“For you as well as for me; that's the worst of it,”said I.“We care nothing for that. It's of you we think,”said the Cherub. And because I knew it was true, more than ever it became my duty to think of him and his.“Of course I don't want to lose any chance of seeing Monica,”I said;“but on the days of the processions I shall walk about in the crowd and keep out of Carmona's way.”“As for us,”said Pilar,“we'll try for a box near the Duke's—though there may be nothing left, as the King's to be here and there's sure to be a crowd. I'll do my best to whisper to Lady Monica, or send her a note, or speak with my eyes if no more.”“You know how I depend on you,”I answered.“She may give you a letter, an answer to one which I hope she got at Manzanares.”“I'll be ready for the lightest hint,”said Pilar.“If she has a note for you, she'll show it behind her fan. Then I'll motion her to crumple it up and throw it on the floor as she goes out. If you don't appear in our society, the Duke will think perhaps that after all he's safe.”“No. We mustn't count on any such thing,”broke in her father.“If he can't get rid of you in one way, he'll try another; and there's an old saying which is still true: anything can happen in Spain, especially in the south. Carmona will be watching for you. You must be prepared for that.”“I shall be,”I said.“We'll all be,”Pilar finished.“Oh, there's the old Roman aqueduct! Isn't it splendid; and strong as if it had been built[pg 211]yesterday instead of in the days before the Goths. I love Seville—love every brick and stone of it, from the ruins of the Moorish wall and the Torre del Oro, and the glorious cathedral, to the old house in the Callo del Candilejo, where the witch-woman looked out and saw King Don Pedro fighting his duel. I don't believe any other place could make up to me for Seville.”By the side of the two-thousand-years-old-aqueduct ran a modern electric tramway; and one of the graceful arches made by Roman hands had been widened to let pass the railway line for Madrid. Farther on, Moorish houses with lofty miradors and beautiful capped windows were tucked between ugly new buildings, and across the shaded avenue of a green park was flung an extraordinary, four-winged spiral staircase of iron. I groaned at the monstrosity, saying that Pedro himself had never perpetrated an act more cruel; and the Cherub excused it sadly, by saying that it was convenient for the crowds to pass from one side of the street to the other, as I should see if I stayed beyond theSemana Santafor theferia.“Look at the Giralda, and you'll forget the iron bridge,”said Pilar. My eyes followed hers, and lit like winging birds upon a beautiful tower soaring delicately against the sky. So light, so fragile in effect was it, I felt that it might lean upon a cloud. In the golden light of afternoon the little pillars of old marble, the carved lozenges of stone, the arches of the horseshoe windows, the dainty carvings of the balconies, and all the marvellous ornamentation that broke the square surfaces of the tower, were rosy as if with reflections from a sunset sky.Itsbeauty was a Moorish poem in brick-work, such as no other hands save Moorish hands have ever made.I looked back until I lost sight of the Giralda, except the glittering figure of Faith on the top (strange symbol for a weather-vane), while threading through tortuous streets, mere strips of pavement veiled with blue shadow, and walled with secretive, flat-fronted houses, old and new, pearly with fresh whitewash, or painted pale lemon, faded orange, or a green ethereal as the[pg 212]tints of seaweed. Even at first sight the quaint town was singularly lovable, in its mingling of simplicity and mystery, and as Spanish in this mixture as in all things else.The tall, straight palms, with their tufted heads like falling fountains, clear against the sky, were Oriental, and seemed scarcely kin to the palms of Italy and Southern France. Nor were the narrow streets, through which we pounded over cobbles, like the narrow streets of Italian towns. They were Spanish; inexplicably but wholly Spanish, although Dick was not sure they did not recall bits of Venice,“just as you turn away from St. Mark's.”It was odd that shops so small could be so gay and attractive as these with their rows of painted fans, their draped mantillas, their bright sashes, foolish little tambourines, castanets tied with rosettes of ribbon in Spanish colours; their curious and vivid antique jewelry; theirsombreros cordobesesdisplayed in the same windows with silk hats from Bond Street; their flaming flowers, Moorish pottery, old lace, and cabinets of inlaid ebony and silver. And I knew that I should learn to love the sounds of Seville better than the sounds of London or other cities I had seen.Haunting sounds they were, these noises of a closely peopled old town, characteristic as those of Naples, not so strident as in Madrid; above all, the sound of bells, ringing, booming, chiming, so continuously that soon they would affect the senses like a heavy perfume always present. One would cease to hear them, and be startled only if their clamouring tongues were silenced.In the streets, where the processions ofSemana Santawould pass, already hundreds of rush-bottomed chairs were ranged in front of houses and shops, piled in confusion, which would be reduced to order for to-morrow, Palm Sunday. Beyond, in the Plaza de la Constitución—scene in old days of the bull-fight andauto-da-fé,—many men were busy putting the last touches on the crimson velvet and gold draperies of the royal box, pounding barriers into place in the tribune in front of the silver-like chasing of the Casa del Ayuntamiento's Plateresque façade,[pg 213]or arranging row after row of chairs in the open space opposite, leaving an aisle for the procession to pass between.“Now there is something to do before we drive home to the Cortijo de Santa Rufina,”said the Cherub.“I must see about getting a box in the tribune for the week; I must find out whether Carmona did come in by train last night. Don Ramón hasn't suggested this plan, but I think he would not dislike it.”“I meant to drop out of the car, to see what I could learn myself, and join you afterwards at home,”I said.“But you can get hold of things better than I, a stranger, can.”“You must remain a stranger,”he supplemented my words.“If your chauffeur will stop at the top of this narrow street, I'll walk down it a few doors to my club, and ask for the latest news. Carmona doesn't honour his house in Seville too often with his presence, though his mother is here every season, and his arrival will be the talk of the club. I can take steps too, about a box for the show. I won't keep you long; but you'd better wait at the Café Perla. Pilar can't go there without me. Oh, you may smile; but remember we're in Spain. She must wait at the house of a friend.”The Cherub's idea of a“little while”and a“long while”were always rather vague, and apt to dovetail confusingly one into another; but knowing what it was his aim to accomplish, I did not grudge the fifty minutes before his ample form and smiling face appeared in the doorway of the café.“It's all right,”were his first words.“I felt my luck wouldn't desert me. Who do you suppose”—and he turned to Pilar, who had come on with him—“was the first man I ran across? No other than Don Esteban Villaroya.”Pilar looked a little frightened.“But he's a friend of the Duke's. Won't that make it awkward?”“No; all the better. I told him Cristóbal and my daughter and I had motored from Burgos with an American friend, an important writer for the papers, who was going to pay us a visit. Not an untrue word to trouble my confessor with. Don[pg 214]Esteban may or may not mention our meeting to Carmona when he dines with him this evening.”“Dines with him? Oh, I hope that won't make mischief.”“It won't. Carmona arrived late last night, with his mother and guests. It seems preparations have been going on in the house for the past fortnight; and the first thing Carmona and his mother did was to send out half a dozen invitations for dinner this evening. Afterwards, he managed, probably through royal influence, to get permission from the Governor to take the party into theAlcázarby moonlight, and he's going to have coloured illuminations, music, and Spanish dances given by professionals in the costumes of different provinces. A grand idea, Don Esteban thinks.”“But why is he doing it?”asked Pilar, thoughtfully.“María purísima! It isn't as if he were an impulsive or hospitable man, fond of getting up impromptu entertainments. This is done in a hurry. What can be his object? for he always has an object.”“To amuse Lady Monica, who's not pleased with him so far,”explained the Cherub.“And as he's a good Catholic, at least in appearance, to-night or the night after will be his last chance to entertain tillSemana Santais over.”“Somehow, I don't feel that's reason enough,”said Pilar, looking so troubled that I felt new stirrings of anxiety, and must have shown it; for Pilar exclaimed that she was a“little beast”to worry me.“You haven't worried me,”I protested.“Still, I think I'll go to that entertainment at theAlcázar.”Pilar and her father stared.“I see what you mean,”said the girl.“You hope to walk in and meet Lady Monica. But you can't, because theAlcázar's closed to the public after sunset. It will only be open for the Duke as a favour, because he's rich and important, and care will be taken that no outsider slips in.”“If there should be one more guitarist than he hired, do you think it would be noticed?”I asked, smiling.Pilar clapped her hands.“You're a true lover, Don Ramón,”[pg 215]she exclaimed.“Ay de mi!Nobody will ever love a little dark thing like myself, as Lady Monica is loved. I must be satisfied with the affections of my relations, and a few others, I suppose.”Great eyes lifted sadly ceiling-ward as she spoke, then cast down with distracting play of long curled lashes. Spanish after all to her finger-tips, this María del Pilar Inés, despite her Irish quickness. Poor Dick!“You believe I could manage it, then?”“I believe youwill. Señor Waring has told me about the masked ball, and how you played Romeo to somebody's Juliet.”“The difficulty will be to get hold of theimpresario.”Pilar looked at her watch.“They'll know at theAlcázarwho's been engaged. There's an hour and a half yet before closing time.”“What if you and I take a stroll through?”suggested Dick.“We'll all take a stroll through,”said Pilar,“and papa shall find out. You know, he can always make everybody tell him anything in five minutes. Even Cristóbal and I have never been able to keep a secret from him. If I'd planned to elope, he would only have to whisper and smile, for me to tell all, even if it meant my going into a convent directly after.”“Yes, we must go to theAlcázarnow, or it will be too late,”said the Cherub, with an indulgent twinkle at his spoiled daughter.The car took us to the gate of theAlcázar, a gate of that unsuggestive Moorish simplicity which purposely hid all splendours of decoration from any save favoured eyes. The guardian knew and evidently respected Colonel O'Donnel; but with apologies which comprehended the whole party, he regretted that he could not let us in. The King was to arrive in a few days, returning from his yachting trip to the Canaries, and would live in theAlcázarwhich was being got ready for him. From now until the day after his departure, theAlcázarwas to be closed to the public.This was just, and as it should be, admitted the Cherub; but[pg 216]we were not the public. We were special ones, even as special as the Duke of Carmona who would entertain his friends there that evening. Surely the guardian must know that the O'Donnel family was on terms of friendship with the Governor of theAlcázar, who would suffer severe pains of the heart if he heard that such visitors had been turned away. Thus the good Cherub continued to whisper. And whether or no coin changed hands I cannot tell; but certain it is that in less than the five minutes allowed by Pilar for the working of her father's fascinations, we were inside the forbidden precincts, accompanied by a lamb-like attendant.It was from him that we must learn what we wished to know; but it would be unwise to betray a premature thirst for information on any subject save the history or beauties of theAlcázar. Asking a question now and then of our guide, we wandered frompatiotopatio, from room to room of that wonderful royal dwelling once called“the house of Cæsar.”Many a rude shock and vicissitude had it sustained when Goths fought for it with Romans, when Moors seized it from Christians, when Christians won it back, and conducted themselves within its jewelled walls in ways unworthy of their faith and boasted chivalry, yet the beauties which Pedro the Cruel restored in admiring imitation of the Alhambra, glowed still with undimmed splendour, in the sunshine of this twentieth century afternoon.If I had not been preoccupied by my own private and extremely modern anxieties, I should have let imagination work the spell it longed to work, and make of me some humble character gliding shadow-like, but ever observant, through tale after tale of the“Arabian Nights.”In just such a palace as this had the Seven Calenders lost each an eye; behind any one of these fretted arches might one come upon a king, half man, half jet-black marble. The most captious of genies could have found no fault with the Hall of the Ambassadors save the absence of the roc's egg; and despite my impatience the storied enchantment of the place soon had me in its grip.[pg 217]Scheherezade, I said to myself, could have invented no tales to surpass in thrilling interest the scenes which had been enacted here. The drama of widowed Egilona and her handsome Moorish prince, ruined by her love; the tragedy of Abu Said, done to death by Pedro for the sake of his“fair ruby, great as a racket ball,”and the store of gems for which men still search secretly in hidden nooks of theAlcázar; the murder of the young Master of Santiago, who came to Pedro as an honoured guest; the love story of Maria de Padilla, whose spirit, the guardian whispered, could be seen to this day flitting in moonlight and shadow along her favourite garden walks, or trailing white robes through rooms which had been hers.“Perhaps, as the moon is full, Maria will appear to-night in the garden to the Duke of Carmona and his guests,”said Pilar; and I knew from this preface that our probation was at an end.The attendant laughed.“Perhaps,”he replied;“but I think there will be too much noise to please her. The Duke has engaged a troupe of dancers and guitarists to entertain his friends.”“No doubt King Don Pedro used to amuse his in the same way,”remarked the Cherub,“employing the forerunners of Ramiro Olivero and his school maybe.”“It is Ramiro Olivero who performs to-night,”said the attendant, playing into our hands.“Of course! He is the favoured one in such affairs,”assented the Cherub.“It ought to be a pretty entertainment, and interesting to the Duke's English guests. It will be somewhere in the gardens?”“In the lower garden of the Moorish kiosk,”was the unsuspecting reply.Pilar looked at me, and her eyes said,“The key you wanted is in your hand.”[pg 218]XXVIIMoonlight in the GardenWhen the Cherub dies and is gathered to his Irish and Spanish fathers (far distant be the day!) he will not know a happy moment in Paradise unless he is doing something ingenuously kind for somebody. It is my conviction that he will have to be made a guardian angel; and I mentioned this theory to him as he took me to the house of Ramiro Olivero, ex-bull-fighter, present professor of Spanish dancing.The others were waiting in the car, as, according to the Cherub's plan of campaign, he and I were to visit Olivero alone.We climbed many stairs to the flat where the celebrated man lives and conducts his school for dancing. He it was who came to the door, and it was a sight worth seeing to watch his somewhat hard, middle-aged features relax in response to cherubic murmurings.Colonel O'Donnel remembered Señor Olivero since the time when he was abanderillero; oh, incomparably the most brilliantbanderilleroof his day. Then, afterwards, what triumphs as atorero! Ah, that was something for an old admirer to remember. Not to regret, naturally, since the señor was as great an artist in his present profession as in that other doubtless sacrificed to family affections.This gentleman whom he (Colonel O'Donnel) now ventured to introduce was from England, travelling with a friend from the States who wrote articles on Spain for well-known journals. The American could speak no Spanish, but with the gentleman[pg 219]from England it was like the native tongue. Therefore it was he who most often attended important ceremonies, and made notes for his friend to work up into articles. This entertainment in which Señor Olivero was assisting the Duke of Carmona, for instance; it would be all that was characteristic of Spain, as well as beautiful. If the señor would allow the gentleman from England to enter theAlcázaras one of his guitarists, an article could be made for the great American newspapers which would not only be a credit to the journalist, but would widely advertise the skill of Señor Olivero and his pupils.If every man has his price, it was not derogatory to his merits that these pearls of flattery should be the price which bought Olivero. Not a penny was to be paid for the favour. When the word“money”was hinted, rather than spoken, the ex-hero of the bull-ring waved it away with a superb gesture. But he would be glad to see the articles when they appeared; and this was promised, for Dick must write them for the neglected papers he was supposed to represent.In return for the promise (and the compliments), it was arranged that I should present myself at his house about ten o'clock (the dance was timed to begin at 10.45), there dress for my part, and be furnished with a guitar. Once inside theAlcázarI need not play upon the instrument; but, said Olivero, it was well that I should be able to do so if called upon. My costume was to be a shortchulojacket and tight-hipped, loose-legged grey trousers, with a low-collared, unstarched shirt, and a broad-brimmed grey sombrero de Cordoba. With this hat, well tipped over my eyes, in moonlight or even spasmodic rose-and-gold bursts of coloured fire, recognition would be impossible at a distance; and I meant to keep at a distance from all the Duke's party—with one exception.By the time the plan was mapped out, it was nearly seven o'clock, but the O'Donnels still urged me to dine at the Cortijo de Santa Rufina. The Gloria would eat up the six miles distance in ten minutes; I could bathe and dress before 8.15, when dinner[pg 220]would be ready (a telegram had been sent to the servants from Cordoba), and rested and refreshed, I could start for Seville in the car again at half-past nine.So we flashed out across the Guadalquivir, by way of the bridge of Isabel Segunda, into that strange suburb which gave Trajan birth, and my family their name; ancient Trajana, now Triana, town of potters, picadores, and gypsies.Dark-browed boys playedtorerosto our car as bull, their coatsmuletas, sticks theirbanderillas, yelling and springing lithely aside as the enemy rushed on them. Girls, handsome as Carmen, flung us flowers, staring boldly eye to eye; and this was my welcome to the place near which the Casa Trianas had once lived and thought themselves great!Almost could I have seen the towers of the old house—now the property of the King—as we passed into open country again; but I did not speak, nor did the others, though the thought in my mind must have been in Pilar's and Colonel O'Donnel's.Five miles more, through falling dusk and sweet country scents and we turned off the main road into another, gleaming white as a path of snow in the opal twilight. Then, in a wide-reaching plantation of olives, spraying silver on a ruddy soil where glimmered irrigation tanks and grinding mills, we came upon a large, irregular clump of white buildings grouped together, and made one by a high wall with an open belfry at one corner.“Here we are at home!”exclaimed the Cherub with a contented sigh, as he gently touched Ropes' shoulder.“Welcome, dear friends, to the Cortijo de Santa Rufina. It, and all within its walls, is at your disposition.”We drove in through a wide gate in the outer wall, where there was a clamour of greeting from the steward, many servants, and more dogs, dogs of all races, who selected Pilar for their wildest demonstrations. In a second she was out of the car, and half drowned in a wave of tumultuous doghood. Laughing, shaking hands with the servants, patting or suppressing greyhounds, collies, setters, retrievers, she had never seemed so charming.[pg 221]This was therealPilar—Pilar at home; the Pilar it would be next to impossible to uproot from such associations. Again, poor Dick! And now he no longer tried to hide the loving admiration in his eyes. I think he would even have done his best to fondle a wild bull or two of her acquaintance had they been among the friends who gave her welcome.Away boomed the Gloria to the stables—the sole garage at the Cortijo—while we were bidden through the Moorish entrance-porch and wrought-ironcancelainto apatiosurrounded on all sides by an arcade, roofed with green and brown tiling. The supporting pillars were of pale pink brick, not marble, and the pavement was of brick also, interset with a pattern of small blue tiles. But the tiles were old and good; from a carved stone basin in the middle of the court sprang the tall crystal stem of a fountain, blossoming into diamonds; pearly arum lilies, pink azaleas, and pale green hydrangeas bloomed in huge white and blue and yellow pots from Triana, of the same beautiful shapes made before Santa Justa and Santa Rufina knew they were saints, and undertook to keep the Giralda from falling.The windows leading into the rooms surrounding thepatiowere large as doors, and all were hospitably open, giving through thin curtains glimpses of old furniture carefully grouped to please a woman's dainty taste. Pilar again—always Pilar! Here were herlaresandpenates; and she was a goddess among lesser household gods. I knew that it would be safer for Dick to say a hasty good-bye upon the threshold; but I knew also that no power on earth could force him to do it.“This is only a farm, you know,”said the girl, meekly, all the while dimpling with pride in her home and what she had made it;“for we are only farmers, aren't we, Papa.”Our rooms—Dick's and mine—were not overstocked with furniture; but there were two or three things for which an antiquary would have pawned his soul. On one side, our windows looked upon thepatio; on the other, we gazed through iron bars over olives and meadows where grain was green. There was no[pg 222]sound save the tinkling rain of the fountain, and now and then the sleepy note of a bird, or a far-away lowing of cattle—perhaps the welcoming bellow of Vivillo, the brown bull which was the sole possession of Carmona coveted by Pilar.The two servants who waited at dinner were wreathed in smiles at seeing again their master and mistress; and their occasional furtive glances of interest in my direction made me wonder if they had not received mysterious instructions as to how they must answer any questions concerning me. But, whatever those instructions might be, I was sure they would be loyally carried out; for the Cherub is a man servants would obey through torture until death, if these days were as the old.At half-past nine Ropes was ready to spin me back into Seville. We arrived earlier than need be; and having made an appointment to meet at a quiet hotel, where Ropes would await me from half-past eleven till half-past twelve, I decided to walk past Carmona's house and reconnoitre.I knew where to find it, in the Calle de las Dueñas; but if I had hoped for a tell-tale glimpse within, as in a London or Parisian mansion, I was disappointed. Once a Moorish palace, it showed a closed, secretive front to the narrow street. But I knew, for I had read, that within there were six courtyards, ninety marble pillars, half a dozen fountains, a garden of orange and magnolia trees, with myrtle hedges clipped to represent the ducal arms; that there were vast treasures of statuary, pictures by Velasquez, Murillo, and Alonso Cano; gold-inlaid plate armour; tapestry from the Netherlands not to be surpassed at the Royal Palace at Madrid.I knew that these splendours would loom large in the eyes of Lady Vale-Avon, and might count for something even with Monica, who confessed to a love of all things beautiful. I thought of the famous Carmona jewels, which would belong to the wife of the Duke, while she lived, as they had belonged to generations of Duchesses. Above all, I thought of the incomparable Blanca Laguna pearl and its glistening maids of honour, which, by this[pg 223]time perhaps, had been shown to Monica. There were few girls in Spain, or in the world, I remembered hearing my mother say, who could resist that pearl as a bride. And now it was offered to Monica, a penniless girl of eighteen, whose beauty formed her sole dowry.There, behind the cold reserve of those white walls with the shut, brass-studded doors and barred windows, she was being fêted by the Duke, dining on gold plate, in a tapestried room fragrant with orange flowers. I could see the pictures. I could see the look in Carmona's eyes as they turned to her, saying,“all this is yours if you will have it.”And Carmona's eyes were handsome eyes; I had to admit that, in justice.Would she hold true to me—true to a man with no palaces, no lands, no priceless pearls, and only half as many hundreds a year as her other lover had thousands? Would she be able to resist her mother, now that mother had seen with her own eyeshowmuch there was to fight for and to win?The question would come. But with it came a vision of Monica herself, pure and sweet as beautiful, loyal and loving as she was lovely. And I said to myself,“Yes, she will be true.”It was with the clear ringing of these words in my mind that I turned my back upon the house of Carmona.Once I had passed into theAlcázarwith Olivero's band of dancers and guitarists I was free to do as I pleased. And I pleased to escape from my laughing, chattering companions before the arrival of the Duke and his guests, and the illuminations in their honour. There was no better place to wait and watch for the opportunity I wanted, than in the mock-Moorish kiosk at the end of the lower garden. From there I could see without being seen; and the moment a chance came I should be ready to take it.It was early still, but Olivero lost no time in marshalling his little army into place, that they might make a good effect as atableau vivantwhen the great people came. He seated his six men with guitars, their sombreros at precisely the right angle on[pg 224]their glossy black heads, and in a row of chairs in front six young women in black dresses with black lace mantillas, the red and yellow ribbons of their castanets already in their hands. Then, at intervals, he grouped the dancers, youths, and pretty girls, carefully dressed in the costumes of different provinces, making a bouquet of bright colours in the light of a few concealed lamps which supplemented the silver radiance of the moon, now almost at the zenith.The minutes passed. The dancers talked in subdued tones which scarcely disturbed the nightingales. A breeze rustled the crisp leaves of the orange trees and myrtle hedges; far away the voice of the watchman told the hour of eleven, echoed by the chiming bells of a church clock; and the last stroke had not sounded when there was a burst of merry voices in a distant avenue. Carmona and his friends had come—late, of course—or there could have been no Andalucíans among them; and suddenly, as if on a signal, the gardens pulsed with rose-coloured light. In the pink blaze I saw Monica, slender and fair as a lily, in a white dress sparkling with silver; but I had only time to see that she walked beside Carmona, when the rose flame died down and left the garden pure and peaceful under the moon.For an instant the soft light seemed darkness, and I lost the white figure. When it sprang to my eyes again in a sharp emerald flash, while all the hidden fountains in the garden walks spouted jewels, others were grouped round it; only the gold crown of rippling hair shone out clear as a star for me among other women's dark coils and braids.Old ebony chairs with crimson velvet cushions and the Carmona arms in heavy gilding, had been sent to theAlcázarfrom the Duke's house, for the entertainment. The party sat down, and the dancing began, to theflamencomusic of guitars and the clacking of castanets; thefandango, thebolero, themalagueña, thechaquera vella; all the classical dances of old Spain, and each one a variant on the theme of love, the woman coy, coquettishly[pg 225]retreating; the man persuading or demanding, the woman yielding in passionate abandonment at last.In the midst of asevillanaI came out from the shadows of the kiosk and walked without a sound of rattling pebble or cracking twig, along a path which the moon had not yet found.The high backs of the ebony chairs were turned to me. I could not even see the heads of the people who sat in them; but I had watched them take their places, and I knew that Monica's chair was the outside one on the end, at the right.Everyone was absorbed in watching the dance. As it approached its tempestuous climax of joy and love, I moved into the deep shadow of a magnolia tree, close to Monica—so close that, reaching out from behind the round trunk which screened me, I touched her hand.With a start, she glanced up, expecting perhaps to find that the breeze had blown a rose-branch across her fingers. Instead, she saw my face; for I had taken off the wide-brimmed grey sombrero and bared my head to her.For a second she looked straight into my eyes, as if she doubted that she saw aright. Then, an unbelievable thing happened. Her eyes grew cold as glass. Her lips tightened into a line which I had not dreamed their soft curves could take. Her youth and beauty froze under my gaze. With a haughty lifting of her brows, and an indescribable movement of her shoulder which could mean nothing but scornful indifference, she turned away as if impatient at having lost a gesture of the dancers.Astounded, I stepped back; and so vast was the chasm of my amazement that I floundered in it bewildered, unable even to suffer.Then came a pang of such pain and anger as I had never known—anger not against the girl, but against Carmona; and the knife which pierced me was dipped in the poison of jealously. My impulse was to leap out from the shadow and strangle him. My hands tingled for his neck, and through the drumming of the blood in my ears I could hear the crack his spine would make[pg 226]as I twisted it. For that instant I was a madman. Then, something that was myself conquered.Horror of the savage thing just born in me overflowed in an icy flood that swept it, drowning, out of my soul. But never again, so long as I may live, shall I condemn a man who kills another in one blind moment of rage.Even when the red glaze was gone from before my eyes, I could not trust myself to stand there, looking at Carmona as he smiled and patronized the dancers by clapping his hands. I turned away, not stopping until I had regained the kiosk.There I sat down, elbows on knees, head in my hands, trying to analyse that look on Monica's face, trying to tell myself that I must have mis-read it—that such an expression as I imagined could not have been there for me.Perhaps, as I suddenly appeared behind a veil of flickering moonlight and shadow she had not known who I was. She had mistaken me for some impertinent stranger, and rather than give an alarm, she had hoped that a frown might rid her of the intruder. Then, I had gone without giving her a second chance to recognize me.After a few minutes of such reflections, I almost persuaded myself that I had been a fool and was wholly to blame for what I suffered. At least, I said, I owed it to her to make sure that the look had been for me, and the suspense must end to-night. I would know, even if I made her answer me under the eyes of Carmona and the others.But a moment later I saw that I need not be driven to such extremes.The first part of the dance was over; the Duke and his guests were walking through the gardens in the interval. They were coming my way—coming to the kiosk. As they advanced, I retreated into shadow. I let the group linger at the kiosk, admiring the beautifulazulejos; I let them move on; then, as Monica loitered purposely behind the others, drooping and evidently sad, I put myself in front of her.[pg 227]“Monica,”I said,“what has happened? You—”The girl flung up her head, and though there was a glitter of tears in her eyes and her face was white under the moon, she stared defiance.“Don't speak to me,”she said.“I never wish to see you again. I'm going to marry the Duke of Carmona.”

[pg 201]XXVWhat Cordoba LackedThrough a flowery field of cloth-of-gold we came, while the afternoon was young, into Cordoba—“Kartuba the Important,”lying like a grave entombing its dead glory, prone at the foot of tombstone mountains.After the dazzle of wild-flowers shining in the sun, and the ozone of country breezes, a sudden entrance into the network of narrow streets was like being thrown, without a clue, into the Minotaur's dark labyrinth.I had thought that no town could have narrower streets than Toledo; but the streets of Cordoba were mere slits between house-walls. As we scraped through on the car, Dick likened the town to a huge white cake divided into slices by a sharp knife, but left in shape with only one or two pieces pulled out to loosen the mass.Still, the stone-paved slits contrived to make pictures; with here and there a pair of splendid Moorish doors, a row of ancient eastern-patterned windows, or a fairy glimpse of a sunlitpatiobeyond a tunnel of shadow; a fountain spraying jewels, a waving of palms and glow of hanging roses.“She's sure to be here,”I said to myself, as we stopped at last before the principal hotel.“Since the journey's supposed to be a pleasure trip, Carmona's bound to give his guests time to see the sights of Cordoba.”But nothing was known of the Duke and his party at the hotel, although there was a rumour that an automobile had passed through the town in the morning.[pg 202]The Cherub, consulted, was of opinion that if Carmona's car had come, it must have remained.“There'd be nowhere for them to stop afterwards short of Seville,”he said,“unless Carmona, and that's near Seville. They must be lurking in Cordoba—perhaps at the Marqués de Villa-blanca's, who's a friend of the Duke's. We shall come across our lovely little lady presently, if we get about in the town; in thePaseo del GranCapitán, or thePatio de los Naranjos, or the cathedral, or by the ruins of theAlcázar.”“Besides, I thought you'd made up your mind not to worry till we got to Seville,”said Dick.“So I had,”I answered.“But I have a feeling as if something had gone wrong.”“Any reason for the feeling—except the feeling itself?”asked Dick.I shook my head, not caring to mention the letter that might have gone astray.“Nothing I can define.”“Then I guess it's all right, and you're developing nerves.”“I knowjusthow he feels,”said Pilar, with a reproachful look at Dick, with whom she was at odds since the episode of the bull.“There was an expression in Lady Monica's eyes, wasn't there, at Manzanares, as if she were sad? Oh, I saw it; and they wouldn't let me get within whispering distance of her afterwards, or I should have found out what it meant. I had the idea that they wereparticularlyanxious to keep me away, and I wondered if there were any new reason. I'm not surprised that Don Ramón is worried. One can see that Señor Waring's never been in love!”“Oh, haven't I?”exclaimed Dick; which, of course made matters worse; and to mend them, he went on blundering. "What doyouknow about the symptoms?"“Girls are born knowing things it takes men years to learn,”said Pilar.It did not allay my anxiety that she should have noticed what I had noticed. But I clung to the Cherub's assurance, hoping,[pg 203]when we had set out on our explorations, to meet her, to see her face light up with the radiance I knew.But there were no strangers save ourselves, and a few wandering Americans under the palms and orange trees of thepaseodedicated to the memory ofEl GranCapitán.We wandered—Pilar keeping at my side, and leaving Dick to her father—from gate to gate outside the Mosque-Cathedral which once made Cordoba the Mecca of Europe; gazing up at the tremendous mass of honey-coloured masonry rising like a vast fortress from its buttresses of stone; lingering under the bell-tower of thePuerta del Perdonbecause Pilar“felt as if something would happen there.”But nothing did happen; and we went to face the blighting of renewed hopes in the Court of Oranges, whose melancholy charm and sensuous perfume was sad as the song of a nightingale when summer is dying.She was not there; nor could we find her in the marble forest of the pillared cathedral, though, while Dick and Pilar made up their differences over the jewelled mosaics, I searched for her.“I tell you, Ramón, there's some satisfaction in feeling that you're looking at the best things the world's got to show,”said Dick, almost in my ear,“and there are lots of them in your country, especially in Cordoba, though I suppose the Moors would weep to see it now. But you don't seem to be enjoying them, in spite of risking such a lot to come where they are.”I didn't remind him that the risk I ran was for the one best thing in all the world, which was only temporarily in my country, and that my depression came because it was not at the moment visible. But Pilar did not need reminding, and in the way of sweet women, tried to“keep my mind occupied”by talking history and legend, confusing them deliciously, and defending her stories of beautiful Egilona and fair Florinda by saying that, anyhow, nobody cared whether they were true or not. Besides, whatwashistory, since dull people were continually discovering that none of the best bits had ever happened?“I choose to believe in Florinda,”she cried,“and all the other[pg 204]beautiful women who influenced kings, and made wars, and upset countries. Without them and their love-stories, history would be like faded tapestry without gold threads.”So Dick ceased to argue, and in silence we left the gem-like perfection of the third Mihrab, to wander once more through the wilderness of gleaming columns that were now like over-arching trees, now like falling fountains.No dusky vista out of those many changing ones framed the figure I longed to see; and when we had left the cathedral and climbed to the gardens and towers where stood once theAlcázarof Gothic and Moorish glories, it was the same story of disappointment. Only the Americans we had seen in thepaseowere there, more interested than I in such fragments as they could catch of Pilar's tales. Dungeons where Theodofredo had been blinded, and Witica the wicked had paid for his crimes; vanished halls where Rodrigo reigned and loved before the dark day beside the Guadalete lost the crown for him and Christendom; what did they hold of interest since the garden of lilacs and roses which covered their ruins was empty of one Presence?When we had seen everything, I left my friends in the hall of the hotel choosing curios from glass cases, and went out again in search of news concerning the automobile which had passed in the morning.Presumably it had attracted a crowd, yet no one seemed to know anything of it until at last, just as I was giving up hope, I met an old man who had seen a large grey motor-car at the railway station. A few minutes later, I had solved the mystery of the Lecomte's disappearance. It had arrived early; its passengers had been conducted round Cordoba in the smallest possible time by Carmona; it had then been driven to the station; and with its late occupants had gone to Seville by the same train.There might have been several motives for this move. The car might have been partially disabled, not having been properly prepared at Manzanares; or Carmona might have determined to thwart the destiny which so far had kept me near him. I was[pg 205]inclined to accept the latter theory, and it did not tend to promote my peace of mind.I was glad to hear, however, that the train was not due at Seville until late that evening. If we made an early start next day, it was not likely that the situation could be much changed before I arrived, free of obligations to the Duchess.Of course, said Pilar, before I had time to ask, they would be ready to start early, oh, very early. It would be beautiful to be in the country before the sun had drunk up the dew on the grass, and withered the roses of dawn in the clouds. There was no fear of cold now that we were in dear Andalucía. Yes! we would have coffee at six, and leave at half-past.I should not have dared suggest such a trial of moral courage, but I accepted the sacrifice; so the roses of morning which Pilar loved still bloomed in the garden of the sky, and trailed their reflection in the Guadalquivir, as we rolled over the old bridge and past the white, Moorish hills.A morning in Paradise could scarcely be more beautiful; and the pinky-purple blossoms of thealamoshimmering in a rosy mist against dark cypress trees, or mingling with the white lace of hawthorn was a colour-symphony of Spring.Dignified country houses no longer raised brown-tiled roofs from among groves of olives; but an illimitable sea of waving downs lay bathed in the amber light of Spain. Then, olive woods again, with a foam, of field-flowers spraying their gnarled feet, hedges of sweetbrier, tangled with tall, wild lilacs, and blossoming thorn. Beyond, high hills up which the Gloria stormed boldly, frightening the horses of a troop of laughing soldiers who rode without saddles; over stony roads, mere rough tracks drawn through meadows, where bulls grazed, and bellowed at the automobile; thus to a village which first showed itself like a white crown on a hilltop, and proved to be inhabited by women and children of surpassing beauty. Never were such eyes as those which looked from the faces in the quick-gathering crowd; eyes like black wells with fallen stars in their depths.[pg 206]Peasant houses by the wayside had thatched roofs, grey and glistening as silver plush; and outside ovens like huge cups turned upside down. The fields were gay with flowers; the distance floated in waves of azure gauze which touched the sky.On we swept, as though to find the joining place, but found only Ecija, the Town of the Seven Brigands, with its grand bridge and pearl-white Moorish mills, in the yellow, swift-running Genil.Kings had been lodged behind those brass-nailed doors and wrought-iron balconies, the Cherub said; and malefactors famed in history and ballad had swung from that tall gallows which caught the eye before Ecija's eight church towers. There had been famous fighting, too, by the river bank; but now the place slept, dreaming of peace, and the whirr of the mill-wheels sounded as comforting as the“chum-chum”of a motor that runs by night.So we flashed out of the Province of Cordoba into the Province of Seville, and tall, slender palms, rearing feathered heads among walnut trees and oaks, were signposts pointing south. It was early in April, but the air was the air of an English June, and I wondered to see men muffled in longcapas.“They do it to keep out the sun, as in the north to keep out the wind,”explained Pilar; but she only laughed when Dick asked why they shaved their donkeys' backs, why they put red and yellow muzzles on their donkeys' mouths, why they always carried plaid“railway rugs”on their beasts' backs or their own, and why their trousers and leggings were made in one piece?Beyond the olives, black clumps of umbrella pines flung ink-blots against the sky, and a purple carpet of budding heather was torn apart to let the road pass through. It was ideal motor-country, and Dick recalled with sneers the sixty horse-power man in Biarritz, who had feared the experiment.“The way is todowhat you want to do, and find out as you go along whether it can be done or not,”he soliloquized.I wondered if he were thinking of another difficult road, not to[pg 207]be travelled by motors—a road where perhaps Don Cipriano already knew the way.Larks sprang skyward from beds of wild flowers as we fled by, little fountains of music; tall cranes flew out of screening bushes beside bright streams; and blurring the distance before us, a mist of rain floated like a veil blown across the face of Spring.In sight of Carmona's splendid walls and ruined castle, the rain caught us; and for Pilar's sake we made the car cosey by fastening down the front glass and filling in the space with drawn canvas curtains.After this, our fleeting glimpses of pine and palm and olive were dimmed as we bowled along a sandy road, yellow as beaten gold. Now and again a patch of purple blossom burning through the mist sang a loud, exultant note of spring and love; and pretty orange-pickers, in men's jackets and brown trousers, warbled of the same theme in that soft Andaluza which is beyond all other languages of passion.The colour, and the music, and the day went to my head. I knew that I was young, and I wanted my chance of happiness—wanted it so much that I felt I could kill a man who dared try to snatch it from me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

[pg 202]The Cherub, consulted, was of opinion that if Carmona's car had come, it must have remained.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It did not allay my anxiety that she should have noticed what I had noticed. But I clung to the Cherub's assurance, hoping,[pg 203]when we had set out on our explorations, to meet her, to see her face light up with the radiance I knew.

But there were no strangers save ourselves, and a few wandering Americans under the palms and orange trees of thepaseodedicated to the memory ofEl GranCapitán.

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

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

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

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

“I choose to believe in Florinda,”she cried,“and all the other[pg 204]beautiful women who influenced kings, and made wars, and upset countries. Without them and their love-stories, history would be like faded tapestry without gold threads.”

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

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

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

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

There might have been several motives for this move. The car might have been partially disabled, not having been properly prepared at Manzanares; or Carmona might have determined to thwart the destiny which so far had kept me near him. I was[pg 205]inclined to accept the latter theory, and it did not tend to promote my peace of mind.

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

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

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

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

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

[pg 206]Peasant houses by the wayside had thatched roofs, grey and glistening as silver plush; and outside ovens like huge cups turned upside down. The fields were gay with flowers; the distance floated in waves of azure gauze which touched the sky.

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

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

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

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

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

I wondered if he were thinking of another difficult road, not to[pg 207]be travelled by motors—a road where perhaps Don Cipriano already knew the way.

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

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

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

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

[pg 208]XXVIIn the Palace of the Kings“Now I've something serious to say, Don Ramón,”began the Cherub, when we had passed the first pink-and-white house which marked the suburbs of Seville.“You mustn't go to an hotel here. It would be dangerous. You must be our guest; and Señor Waring, too. I feel now as if our little play were true, and you were my son; while as for Señor Waring, we might have known him for years, might we not, Pilarcita?”“Of course. For my part, I'm ready to adopt him for a brother, too,”replied Pilar.I covered Dick's recoil at this blow by thanking the Cherub. He was more than kind, I said, but we couldn't think of—“You will not think of disappointing us,”broke in the dear brown fellow.“Could you have imagined that our only reason is to keep you out of danger? No. We're not so unselfish. We want you. Partings will come soon enough. We must have you with us, under our roof, at our table, as long as we can. Now you understand, you will say‘yes.’”“In my country,”said Dick, as a broad hint to me,“when we tell people we want them to visit us, we mean it; and I guess Colonel O'Donnel and Miss O'Donnel are the same sort.”Of course I wanted to say yes; and, of course, after this, I did say yes without further parleying.“Now begins the most critical time in this adventure of yours. Don Ramón,”the Cherub went on.“You see, as our place is only five miles outside Seville, we know many people; and[pg 209]though Carmona is seldom there with his mother, he certainly has acquaintances, and some of them may be ours too. You have travelled since Burgos as my son, though you wore his uniform only for two days; but you may be sure Carmona has been looking forward to shaking you off, once and for all, if you should venture to Seville to see the show ofSemana Santaas other tourists see it.”“He perhaps thinks that, because of our promise—which we've kept—he's shaken Ramón off already,”said Dick.“He knows better. The trick answered for a few hours; but his car broke down, and he had to accept our help. He said then that fate was against him; I heard it; and Carmona's a man to be actually superstitious about you, now. So far, he's kept the little señorita out of touch with you, but that's nearly all he has accomplished.”“Thanks to you both,”I cut in.“If it hadn't been for your help, I should have been‘pinched,’and hustled over the border long ago. I see that now; and though I should have come back and begun the chase again somehow, it would have been a thousand times more difficult.”“No use bothering about whatmighthave happened,”laughed Pilar.“Let's think of what did happen—and what will.”“Nevertheless,”said I,“the thought's often in my mind; what if we had missed Colonel and Miss O'Donnel at Burgos?”Dick chuckled; and when Pilar wanted to know what amused him, asked my permission to tell. I gave him leave; and with a memory for detail which I could have spared, to say nothing of an attempt at mimicry, he repeated, word for word, my objections to meeting the Irish friends of Angèle de la Mole.We were so intimate now that my point of view before knowing them did seem particularly comic, and Dick made the most of it.“Well, think what we have to thank you for!”exclaimed Pilar;“this delightful trip. If it hadn't been for you, Cristóbal would be here instead of with Angèle in Biarritz.”[pg 210]“Come back to common sense,”implored the Cherub,“and help me plan for the Cristóbal who is here. If he sits in our box for the processions, Carmona will see him and say to some officious person, very different from Rafael Calmenare,‘who is that young man with the O'Donnels?’And the officious person will answer,‘I never saw him in my life.’‘Ah,’the Duke will exclaim,‘isn't he Cristóbal O'Donnel?’‘Not at all,’will come the reply; and Carmona will proceed to make trouble.”“For you as well as for me; that's the worst of it,”said I.“We care nothing for that. It's of you we think,”said the Cherub. And because I knew it was true, more than ever it became my duty to think of him and his.“Of course I don't want to lose any chance of seeing Monica,”I said;“but on the days of the processions I shall walk about in the crowd and keep out of Carmona's way.”“As for us,”said Pilar,“we'll try for a box near the Duke's—though there may be nothing left, as the King's to be here and there's sure to be a crowd. I'll do my best to whisper to Lady Monica, or send her a note, or speak with my eyes if no more.”“You know how I depend on you,”I answered.“She may give you a letter, an answer to one which I hope she got at Manzanares.”“I'll be ready for the lightest hint,”said Pilar.“If she has a note for you, she'll show it behind her fan. Then I'll motion her to crumple it up and throw it on the floor as she goes out. If you don't appear in our society, the Duke will think perhaps that after all he's safe.”“No. We mustn't count on any such thing,”broke in her father.“If he can't get rid of you in one way, he'll try another; and there's an old saying which is still true: anything can happen in Spain, especially in the south. Carmona will be watching for you. You must be prepared for that.”“I shall be,”I said.“We'll all be,”Pilar finished.“Oh, there's the old Roman aqueduct! Isn't it splendid; and strong as if it had been built[pg 211]yesterday instead of in the days before the Goths. I love Seville—love every brick and stone of it, from the ruins of the Moorish wall and the Torre del Oro, and the glorious cathedral, to the old house in the Callo del Candilejo, where the witch-woman looked out and saw King Don Pedro fighting his duel. I don't believe any other place could make up to me for Seville.”By the side of the two-thousand-years-old-aqueduct ran a modern electric tramway; and one of the graceful arches made by Roman hands had been widened to let pass the railway line for Madrid. Farther on, Moorish houses with lofty miradors and beautiful capped windows were tucked between ugly new buildings, and across the shaded avenue of a green park was flung an extraordinary, four-winged spiral staircase of iron. I groaned at the monstrosity, saying that Pedro himself had never perpetrated an act more cruel; and the Cherub excused it sadly, by saying that it was convenient for the crowds to pass from one side of the street to the other, as I should see if I stayed beyond theSemana Santafor theferia.“Look at the Giralda, and you'll forget the iron bridge,”said Pilar. My eyes followed hers, and lit like winging birds upon a beautiful tower soaring delicately against the sky. So light, so fragile in effect was it, I felt that it might lean upon a cloud. In the golden light of afternoon the little pillars of old marble, the carved lozenges of stone, the arches of the horseshoe windows, the dainty carvings of the balconies, and all the marvellous ornamentation that broke the square surfaces of the tower, were rosy as if with reflections from a sunset sky.Itsbeauty was a Moorish poem in brick-work, such as no other hands save Moorish hands have ever made.I looked back until I lost sight of the Giralda, except the glittering figure of Faith on the top (strange symbol for a weather-vane), while threading through tortuous streets, mere strips of pavement veiled with blue shadow, and walled with secretive, flat-fronted houses, old and new, pearly with fresh whitewash, or painted pale lemon, faded orange, or a green ethereal as the[pg 212]tints of seaweed. Even at first sight the quaint town was singularly lovable, in its mingling of simplicity and mystery, and as Spanish in this mixture as in all things else.The tall, straight palms, with their tufted heads like falling fountains, clear against the sky, were Oriental, and seemed scarcely kin to the palms of Italy and Southern France. Nor were the narrow streets, through which we pounded over cobbles, like the narrow streets of Italian towns. They were Spanish; inexplicably but wholly Spanish, although Dick was not sure they did not recall bits of Venice,“just as you turn away from St. Mark's.”It was odd that shops so small could be so gay and attractive as these with their rows of painted fans, their draped mantillas, their bright sashes, foolish little tambourines, castanets tied with rosettes of ribbon in Spanish colours; their curious and vivid antique jewelry; theirsombreros cordobesesdisplayed in the same windows with silk hats from Bond Street; their flaming flowers, Moorish pottery, old lace, and cabinets of inlaid ebony and silver. And I knew that I should learn to love the sounds of Seville better than the sounds of London or other cities I had seen.Haunting sounds they were, these noises of a closely peopled old town, characteristic as those of Naples, not so strident as in Madrid; above all, the sound of bells, ringing, booming, chiming, so continuously that soon they would affect the senses like a heavy perfume always present. One would cease to hear them, and be startled only if their clamouring tongues were silenced.In the streets, where the processions ofSemana Santawould pass, already hundreds of rush-bottomed chairs were ranged in front of houses and shops, piled in confusion, which would be reduced to order for to-morrow, Palm Sunday. Beyond, in the Plaza de la Constitución—scene in old days of the bull-fight andauto-da-fé,—many men were busy putting the last touches on the crimson velvet and gold draperies of the royal box, pounding barriers into place in the tribune in front of the silver-like chasing of the Casa del Ayuntamiento's Plateresque façade,[pg 213]or arranging row after row of chairs in the open space opposite, leaving an aisle for the procession to pass between.“Now there is something to do before we drive home to the Cortijo de Santa Rufina,”said the Cherub.“I must see about getting a box in the tribune for the week; I must find out whether Carmona did come in by train last night. Don Ramón hasn't suggested this plan, but I think he would not dislike it.”“I meant to drop out of the car, to see what I could learn myself, and join you afterwards at home,”I said.“But you can get hold of things better than I, a stranger, can.”“You must remain a stranger,”he supplemented my words.“If your chauffeur will stop at the top of this narrow street, I'll walk down it a few doors to my club, and ask for the latest news. Carmona doesn't honour his house in Seville too often with his presence, though his mother is here every season, and his arrival will be the talk of the club. I can take steps too, about a box for the show. I won't keep you long; but you'd better wait at the Café Perla. Pilar can't go there without me. Oh, you may smile; but remember we're in Spain. She must wait at the house of a friend.”The Cherub's idea of a“little while”and a“long while”were always rather vague, and apt to dovetail confusingly one into another; but knowing what it was his aim to accomplish, I did not grudge the fifty minutes before his ample form and smiling face appeared in the doorway of the café.“It's all right,”were his first words.“I felt my luck wouldn't desert me. Who do you suppose”—and he turned to Pilar, who had come on with him—“was the first man I ran across? No other than Don Esteban Villaroya.”Pilar looked a little frightened.“But he's a friend of the Duke's. Won't that make it awkward?”“No; all the better. I told him Cristóbal and my daughter and I had motored from Burgos with an American friend, an important writer for the papers, who was going to pay us a visit. Not an untrue word to trouble my confessor with. Don[pg 214]Esteban may or may not mention our meeting to Carmona when he dines with him this evening.”“Dines with him? Oh, I hope that won't make mischief.”“It won't. Carmona arrived late last night, with his mother and guests. It seems preparations have been going on in the house for the past fortnight; and the first thing Carmona and his mother did was to send out half a dozen invitations for dinner this evening. Afterwards, he managed, probably through royal influence, to get permission from the Governor to take the party into theAlcázarby moonlight, and he's going to have coloured illuminations, music, and Spanish dances given by professionals in the costumes of different provinces. A grand idea, Don Esteban thinks.”“But why is he doing it?”asked Pilar, thoughtfully.“María purísima! It isn't as if he were an impulsive or hospitable man, fond of getting up impromptu entertainments. This is done in a hurry. What can be his object? for he always has an object.”“To amuse Lady Monica, who's not pleased with him so far,”explained the Cherub.“And as he's a good Catholic, at least in appearance, to-night or the night after will be his last chance to entertain tillSemana Santais over.”“Somehow, I don't feel that's reason enough,”said Pilar, looking so troubled that I felt new stirrings of anxiety, and must have shown it; for Pilar exclaimed that she was a“little beast”to worry me.“You haven't worried me,”I protested.“Still, I think I'll go to that entertainment at theAlcázar.”Pilar and her father stared.“I see what you mean,”said the girl.“You hope to walk in and meet Lady Monica. But you can't, because theAlcázar's closed to the public after sunset. It will only be open for the Duke as a favour, because he's rich and important, and care will be taken that no outsider slips in.”“If there should be one more guitarist than he hired, do you think it would be noticed?”I asked, smiling.Pilar clapped her hands.“You're a true lover, Don Ramón,”[pg 215]she exclaimed.“Ay de mi!Nobody will ever love a little dark thing like myself, as Lady Monica is loved. I must be satisfied with the affections of my relations, and a few others, I suppose.”Great eyes lifted sadly ceiling-ward as she spoke, then cast down with distracting play of long curled lashes. Spanish after all to her finger-tips, this María del Pilar Inés, despite her Irish quickness. Poor Dick!“You believe I could manage it, then?”“I believe youwill. Señor Waring has told me about the masked ball, and how you played Romeo to somebody's Juliet.”“The difficulty will be to get hold of theimpresario.”Pilar looked at her watch.“They'll know at theAlcázarwho's been engaged. There's an hour and a half yet before closing time.”“What if you and I take a stroll through?”suggested Dick.“We'll all take a stroll through,”said Pilar,“and papa shall find out. You know, he can always make everybody tell him anything in five minutes. Even Cristóbal and I have never been able to keep a secret from him. If I'd planned to elope, he would only have to whisper and smile, for me to tell all, even if it meant my going into a convent directly after.”“Yes, we must go to theAlcázarnow, or it will be too late,”said the Cherub, with an indulgent twinkle at his spoiled daughter.The car took us to the gate of theAlcázar, a gate of that unsuggestive Moorish simplicity which purposely hid all splendours of decoration from any save favoured eyes. The guardian knew and evidently respected Colonel O'Donnel; but with apologies which comprehended the whole party, he regretted that he could not let us in. The King was to arrive in a few days, returning from his yachting trip to the Canaries, and would live in theAlcázarwhich was being got ready for him. From now until the day after his departure, theAlcázarwas to be closed to the public.This was just, and as it should be, admitted the Cherub; but[pg 216]we were not the public. We were special ones, even as special as the Duke of Carmona who would entertain his friends there that evening. Surely the guardian must know that the O'Donnel family was on terms of friendship with the Governor of theAlcázar, who would suffer severe pains of the heart if he heard that such visitors had been turned away. Thus the good Cherub continued to whisper. And whether or no coin changed hands I cannot tell; but certain it is that in less than the five minutes allowed by Pilar for the working of her father's fascinations, we were inside the forbidden precincts, accompanied by a lamb-like attendant.It was from him that we must learn what we wished to know; but it would be unwise to betray a premature thirst for information on any subject save the history or beauties of theAlcázar. Asking a question now and then of our guide, we wandered frompatiotopatio, from room to room of that wonderful royal dwelling once called“the house of Cæsar.”Many a rude shock and vicissitude had it sustained when Goths fought for it with Romans, when Moors seized it from Christians, when Christians won it back, and conducted themselves within its jewelled walls in ways unworthy of their faith and boasted chivalry, yet the beauties which Pedro the Cruel restored in admiring imitation of the Alhambra, glowed still with undimmed splendour, in the sunshine of this twentieth century afternoon.If I had not been preoccupied by my own private and extremely modern anxieties, I should have let imagination work the spell it longed to work, and make of me some humble character gliding shadow-like, but ever observant, through tale after tale of the“Arabian Nights.”In just such a palace as this had the Seven Calenders lost each an eye; behind any one of these fretted arches might one come upon a king, half man, half jet-black marble. The most captious of genies could have found no fault with the Hall of the Ambassadors save the absence of the roc's egg; and despite my impatience the storied enchantment of the place soon had me in its grip.[pg 217]Scheherezade, I said to myself, could have invented no tales to surpass in thrilling interest the scenes which had been enacted here. The drama of widowed Egilona and her handsome Moorish prince, ruined by her love; the tragedy of Abu Said, done to death by Pedro for the sake of his“fair ruby, great as a racket ball,”and the store of gems for which men still search secretly in hidden nooks of theAlcázar; the murder of the young Master of Santiago, who came to Pedro as an honoured guest; the love story of Maria de Padilla, whose spirit, the guardian whispered, could be seen to this day flitting in moonlight and shadow along her favourite garden walks, or trailing white robes through rooms which had been hers.“Perhaps, as the moon is full, Maria will appear to-night in the garden to the Duke of Carmona and his guests,”said Pilar; and I knew from this preface that our probation was at an end.The attendant laughed.“Perhaps,”he replied;“but I think there will be too much noise to please her. The Duke has engaged a troupe of dancers and guitarists to entertain his friends.”“No doubt King Don Pedro used to amuse his in the same way,”remarked the Cherub,“employing the forerunners of Ramiro Olivero and his school maybe.”“It is Ramiro Olivero who performs to-night,”said the attendant, playing into our hands.“Of course! He is the favoured one in such affairs,”assented the Cherub.“It ought to be a pretty entertainment, and interesting to the Duke's English guests. It will be somewhere in the gardens?”“In the lower garden of the Moorish kiosk,”was the unsuspecting reply.Pilar looked at me, and her eyes said,“The key you wanted is in your hand.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Now begins the most critical time in this adventure of yours. Don Ramón,”the Cherub went on.“You see, as our place is only five miles outside Seville, we know many people; and[pg 209]though Carmona is seldom there with his mother, he certainly has acquaintances, and some of them may be ours too. You have travelled since Burgos as my son, though you wore his uniform only for two days; but you may be sure Carmona has been looking forward to shaking you off, once and for all, if you should venture to Seville to see the show ofSemana Santaas other tourists see it.”

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

“He knows better. The trick answered for a few hours; but his car broke down, and he had to accept our help. He said then that fate was against him; I heard it; and Carmona's a man to be actually superstitious about you, now. So far, he's kept the little señorita out of touch with you, but that's nearly all he has accomplished.”

“Thanks to you both,”I cut in.“If it hadn't been for your help, I should have been‘pinched,’and hustled over the border long ago. I see that now; and though I should have come back and begun the chase again somehow, it would have been a thousand times more difficult.”

“No use bothering about whatmighthave happened,”laughed Pilar.“Let's think of what did happen—and what will.”

“Nevertheless,”said I,“the thought's often in my mind; what if we had missed Colonel and Miss O'Donnel at Burgos?”

Dick chuckled; and when Pilar wanted to know what amused him, asked my permission to tell. I gave him leave; and with a memory for detail which I could have spared, to say nothing of an attempt at mimicry, he repeated, word for word, my objections to meeting the Irish friends of Angèle de la Mole.

We were so intimate now that my point of view before knowing them did seem particularly comic, and Dick made the most of it.

“Well, think what we have to thank you for!”exclaimed Pilar;“this delightful trip. If it hadn't been for you, Cristóbal would be here instead of with Angèle in Biarritz.”

[pg 210]“Come back to common sense,”implored the Cherub,“and help me plan for the Cristóbal who is here. If he sits in our box for the processions, Carmona will see him and say to some officious person, very different from Rafael Calmenare,‘who is that young man with the O'Donnels?’And the officious person will answer,‘I never saw him in my life.’‘Ah,’the Duke will exclaim,‘isn't he Cristóbal O'Donnel?’‘Not at all,’will come the reply; and Carmona will proceed to make trouble.”

“For you as well as for me; that's the worst of it,”said I.

“We care nothing for that. It's of you we think,”said the Cherub. And because I knew it was true, more than ever it became my duty to think of him and his.

“Of course I don't want to lose any chance of seeing Monica,”I said;“but on the days of the processions I shall walk about in the crowd and keep out of Carmona's way.”

“As for us,”said Pilar,“we'll try for a box near the Duke's—though there may be nothing left, as the King's to be here and there's sure to be a crowd. I'll do my best to whisper to Lady Monica, or send her a note, or speak with my eyes if no more.”

“You know how I depend on you,”I answered.“She may give you a letter, an answer to one which I hope she got at Manzanares.”

“I'll be ready for the lightest hint,”said Pilar.“If she has a note for you, she'll show it behind her fan. Then I'll motion her to crumple it up and throw it on the floor as she goes out. If you don't appear in our society, the Duke will think perhaps that after all he's safe.”

“No. We mustn't count on any such thing,”broke in her father.“If he can't get rid of you in one way, he'll try another; and there's an old saying which is still true: anything can happen in Spain, especially in the south. Carmona will be watching for you. You must be prepared for that.”

“I shall be,”I said.

“We'll all be,”Pilar finished.“Oh, there's the old Roman aqueduct! Isn't it splendid; and strong as if it had been built[pg 211]yesterday instead of in the days before the Goths. I love Seville—love every brick and stone of it, from the ruins of the Moorish wall and the Torre del Oro, and the glorious cathedral, to the old house in the Callo del Candilejo, where the witch-woman looked out and saw King Don Pedro fighting his duel. I don't believe any other place could make up to me for Seville.”

By the side of the two-thousand-years-old-aqueduct ran a modern electric tramway; and one of the graceful arches made by Roman hands had been widened to let pass the railway line for Madrid. Farther on, Moorish houses with lofty miradors and beautiful capped windows were tucked between ugly new buildings, and across the shaded avenue of a green park was flung an extraordinary, four-winged spiral staircase of iron. I groaned at the monstrosity, saying that Pedro himself had never perpetrated an act more cruel; and the Cherub excused it sadly, by saying that it was convenient for the crowds to pass from one side of the street to the other, as I should see if I stayed beyond theSemana Santafor theferia.

“Look at the Giralda, and you'll forget the iron bridge,”said Pilar. My eyes followed hers, and lit like winging birds upon a beautiful tower soaring delicately against the sky. So light, so fragile in effect was it, I felt that it might lean upon a cloud. In the golden light of afternoon the little pillars of old marble, the carved lozenges of stone, the arches of the horseshoe windows, the dainty carvings of the balconies, and all the marvellous ornamentation that broke the square surfaces of the tower, were rosy as if with reflections from a sunset sky.Itsbeauty was a Moorish poem in brick-work, such as no other hands save Moorish hands have ever made.

I looked back until I lost sight of the Giralda, except the glittering figure of Faith on the top (strange symbol for a weather-vane), while threading through tortuous streets, mere strips of pavement veiled with blue shadow, and walled with secretive, flat-fronted houses, old and new, pearly with fresh whitewash, or painted pale lemon, faded orange, or a green ethereal as the[pg 212]tints of seaweed. Even at first sight the quaint town was singularly lovable, in its mingling of simplicity and mystery, and as Spanish in this mixture as in all things else.

The tall, straight palms, with their tufted heads like falling fountains, clear against the sky, were Oriental, and seemed scarcely kin to the palms of Italy and Southern France. Nor were the narrow streets, through which we pounded over cobbles, like the narrow streets of Italian towns. They were Spanish; inexplicably but wholly Spanish, although Dick was not sure they did not recall bits of Venice,“just as you turn away from St. Mark's.”

It was odd that shops so small could be so gay and attractive as these with their rows of painted fans, their draped mantillas, their bright sashes, foolish little tambourines, castanets tied with rosettes of ribbon in Spanish colours; their curious and vivid antique jewelry; theirsombreros cordobesesdisplayed in the same windows with silk hats from Bond Street; their flaming flowers, Moorish pottery, old lace, and cabinets of inlaid ebony and silver. And I knew that I should learn to love the sounds of Seville better than the sounds of London or other cities I had seen.

Haunting sounds they were, these noises of a closely peopled old town, characteristic as those of Naples, not so strident as in Madrid; above all, the sound of bells, ringing, booming, chiming, so continuously that soon they would affect the senses like a heavy perfume always present. One would cease to hear them, and be startled only if their clamouring tongues were silenced.

In the streets, where the processions ofSemana Santawould pass, already hundreds of rush-bottomed chairs were ranged in front of houses and shops, piled in confusion, which would be reduced to order for to-morrow, Palm Sunday. Beyond, in the Plaza de la Constitución—scene in old days of the bull-fight andauto-da-fé,—many men were busy putting the last touches on the crimson velvet and gold draperies of the royal box, pounding barriers into place in the tribune in front of the silver-like chasing of the Casa del Ayuntamiento's Plateresque façade,[pg 213]or arranging row after row of chairs in the open space opposite, leaving an aisle for the procession to pass between.

“Now there is something to do before we drive home to the Cortijo de Santa Rufina,”said the Cherub.“I must see about getting a box in the tribune for the week; I must find out whether Carmona did come in by train last night. Don Ramón hasn't suggested this plan, but I think he would not dislike it.”

“I meant to drop out of the car, to see what I could learn myself, and join you afterwards at home,”I said.“But you can get hold of things better than I, a stranger, can.”

“You must remain a stranger,”he supplemented my words.“If your chauffeur will stop at the top of this narrow street, I'll walk down it a few doors to my club, and ask for the latest news. Carmona doesn't honour his house in Seville too often with his presence, though his mother is here every season, and his arrival will be the talk of the club. I can take steps too, about a box for the show. I won't keep you long; but you'd better wait at the Café Perla. Pilar can't go there without me. Oh, you may smile; but remember we're in Spain. She must wait at the house of a friend.”

The Cherub's idea of a“little while”and a“long while”were always rather vague, and apt to dovetail confusingly one into another; but knowing what it was his aim to accomplish, I did not grudge the fifty minutes before his ample form and smiling face appeared in the doorway of the café.

“It's all right,”were his first words.“I felt my luck wouldn't desert me. Who do you suppose”—and he turned to Pilar, who had come on with him—“was the first man I ran across? No other than Don Esteban Villaroya.”

Pilar looked a little frightened.“But he's a friend of the Duke's. Won't that make it awkward?”

“No; all the better. I told him Cristóbal and my daughter and I had motored from Burgos with an American friend, an important writer for the papers, who was going to pay us a visit. Not an untrue word to trouble my confessor with. Don[pg 214]Esteban may or may not mention our meeting to Carmona when he dines with him this evening.”

“Dines with him? Oh, I hope that won't make mischief.”

“It won't. Carmona arrived late last night, with his mother and guests. It seems preparations have been going on in the house for the past fortnight; and the first thing Carmona and his mother did was to send out half a dozen invitations for dinner this evening. Afterwards, he managed, probably through royal influence, to get permission from the Governor to take the party into theAlcázarby moonlight, and he's going to have coloured illuminations, music, and Spanish dances given by professionals in the costumes of different provinces. A grand idea, Don Esteban thinks.”

“But why is he doing it?”asked Pilar, thoughtfully.“María purísima! It isn't as if he were an impulsive or hospitable man, fond of getting up impromptu entertainments. This is done in a hurry. What can be his object? for he always has an object.”

“To amuse Lady Monica, who's not pleased with him so far,”explained the Cherub.“And as he's a good Catholic, at least in appearance, to-night or the night after will be his last chance to entertain tillSemana Santais over.”

“Somehow, I don't feel that's reason enough,”said Pilar, looking so troubled that I felt new stirrings of anxiety, and must have shown it; for Pilar exclaimed that she was a“little beast”to worry me.

“You haven't worried me,”I protested.“Still, I think I'll go to that entertainment at theAlcázar.”

Pilar and her father stared.“I see what you mean,”said the girl.“You hope to walk in and meet Lady Monica. But you can't, because theAlcázar's closed to the public after sunset. It will only be open for the Duke as a favour, because he's rich and important, and care will be taken that no outsider slips in.”

“If there should be one more guitarist than he hired, do you think it would be noticed?”I asked, smiling.

Pilar clapped her hands.“You're a true lover, Don Ramón,”[pg 215]she exclaimed.“Ay de mi!Nobody will ever love a little dark thing like myself, as Lady Monica is loved. I must be satisfied with the affections of my relations, and a few others, I suppose.”Great eyes lifted sadly ceiling-ward as she spoke, then cast down with distracting play of long curled lashes. Spanish after all to her finger-tips, this María del Pilar Inés, despite her Irish quickness. Poor Dick!

“You believe I could manage it, then?”

“I believe youwill. Señor Waring has told me about the masked ball, and how you played Romeo to somebody's Juliet.”

“The difficulty will be to get hold of theimpresario.”

Pilar looked at her watch.“They'll know at theAlcázarwho's been engaged. There's an hour and a half yet before closing time.”

“What if you and I take a stroll through?”suggested Dick.

“We'll all take a stroll through,”said Pilar,“and papa shall find out. You know, he can always make everybody tell him anything in five minutes. Even Cristóbal and I have never been able to keep a secret from him. If I'd planned to elope, he would only have to whisper and smile, for me to tell all, even if it meant my going into a convent directly after.”

“Yes, we must go to theAlcázarnow, or it will be too late,”said the Cherub, with an indulgent twinkle at his spoiled daughter.

The car took us to the gate of theAlcázar, a gate of that unsuggestive Moorish simplicity which purposely hid all splendours of decoration from any save favoured eyes. The guardian knew and evidently respected Colonel O'Donnel; but with apologies which comprehended the whole party, he regretted that he could not let us in. The King was to arrive in a few days, returning from his yachting trip to the Canaries, and would live in theAlcázarwhich was being got ready for him. From now until the day after his departure, theAlcázarwas to be closed to the public.

This was just, and as it should be, admitted the Cherub; but[pg 216]we were not the public. We were special ones, even as special as the Duke of Carmona who would entertain his friends there that evening. Surely the guardian must know that the O'Donnel family was on terms of friendship with the Governor of theAlcázar, who would suffer severe pains of the heart if he heard that such visitors had been turned away. Thus the good Cherub continued to whisper. And whether or no coin changed hands I cannot tell; but certain it is that in less than the five minutes allowed by Pilar for the working of her father's fascinations, we were inside the forbidden precincts, accompanied by a lamb-like attendant.

It was from him that we must learn what we wished to know; but it would be unwise to betray a premature thirst for information on any subject save the history or beauties of theAlcázar. Asking a question now and then of our guide, we wandered frompatiotopatio, from room to room of that wonderful royal dwelling once called“the house of Cæsar.”Many a rude shock and vicissitude had it sustained when Goths fought for it with Romans, when Moors seized it from Christians, when Christians won it back, and conducted themselves within its jewelled walls in ways unworthy of their faith and boasted chivalry, yet the beauties which Pedro the Cruel restored in admiring imitation of the Alhambra, glowed still with undimmed splendour, in the sunshine of this twentieth century afternoon.

If I had not been preoccupied by my own private and extremely modern anxieties, I should have let imagination work the spell it longed to work, and make of me some humble character gliding shadow-like, but ever observant, through tale after tale of the“Arabian Nights.”In just such a palace as this had the Seven Calenders lost each an eye; behind any one of these fretted arches might one come upon a king, half man, half jet-black marble. The most captious of genies could have found no fault with the Hall of the Ambassadors save the absence of the roc's egg; and despite my impatience the storied enchantment of the place soon had me in its grip.

[pg 217]Scheherezade, I said to myself, could have invented no tales to surpass in thrilling interest the scenes which had been enacted here. The drama of widowed Egilona and her handsome Moorish prince, ruined by her love; the tragedy of Abu Said, done to death by Pedro for the sake of his“fair ruby, great as a racket ball,”and the store of gems for which men still search secretly in hidden nooks of theAlcázar; the murder of the young Master of Santiago, who came to Pedro as an honoured guest; the love story of Maria de Padilla, whose spirit, the guardian whispered, could be seen to this day flitting in moonlight and shadow along her favourite garden walks, or trailing white robes through rooms which had been hers.

“Perhaps, as the moon is full, Maria will appear to-night in the garden to the Duke of Carmona and his guests,”said Pilar; and I knew from this preface that our probation was at an end.

The attendant laughed.“Perhaps,”he replied;“but I think there will be too much noise to please her. The Duke has engaged a troupe of dancers and guitarists to entertain his friends.”

“No doubt King Don Pedro used to amuse his in the same way,”remarked the Cherub,“employing the forerunners of Ramiro Olivero and his school maybe.”

“It is Ramiro Olivero who performs to-night,”said the attendant, playing into our hands.

“Of course! He is the favoured one in such affairs,”assented the Cherub.“It ought to be a pretty entertainment, and interesting to the Duke's English guests. It will be somewhere in the gardens?”

“In the lower garden of the Moorish kiosk,”was the unsuspecting reply.

Pilar looked at me, and her eyes said,“The key you wanted is in your hand.”

[pg 218]XXVIIMoonlight in the GardenWhen the Cherub dies and is gathered to his Irish and Spanish fathers (far distant be the day!) he will not know a happy moment in Paradise unless he is doing something ingenuously kind for somebody. It is my conviction that he will have to be made a guardian angel; and I mentioned this theory to him as he took me to the house of Ramiro Olivero, ex-bull-fighter, present professor of Spanish dancing.The others were waiting in the car, as, according to the Cherub's plan of campaign, he and I were to visit Olivero alone.We climbed many stairs to the flat where the celebrated man lives and conducts his school for dancing. He it was who came to the door, and it was a sight worth seeing to watch his somewhat hard, middle-aged features relax in response to cherubic murmurings.Colonel O'Donnel remembered Señor Olivero since the time when he was abanderillero; oh, incomparably the most brilliantbanderilleroof his day. Then, afterwards, what triumphs as atorero! Ah, that was something for an old admirer to remember. Not to regret, naturally, since the señor was as great an artist in his present profession as in that other doubtless sacrificed to family affections.This gentleman whom he (Colonel O'Donnel) now ventured to introduce was from England, travelling with a friend from the States who wrote articles on Spain for well-known journals. The American could speak no Spanish, but with the gentleman[pg 219]from England it was like the native tongue. Therefore it was he who most often attended important ceremonies, and made notes for his friend to work up into articles. This entertainment in which Señor Olivero was assisting the Duke of Carmona, for instance; it would be all that was characteristic of Spain, as well as beautiful. If the señor would allow the gentleman from England to enter theAlcázaras one of his guitarists, an article could be made for the great American newspapers which would not only be a credit to the journalist, but would widely advertise the skill of Señor Olivero and his pupils.If every man has his price, it was not derogatory to his merits that these pearls of flattery should be the price which bought Olivero. Not a penny was to be paid for the favour. When the word“money”was hinted, rather than spoken, the ex-hero of the bull-ring waved it away with a superb gesture. But he would be glad to see the articles when they appeared; and this was promised, for Dick must write them for the neglected papers he was supposed to represent.In return for the promise (and the compliments), it was arranged that I should present myself at his house about ten o'clock (the dance was timed to begin at 10.45), there dress for my part, and be furnished with a guitar. Once inside theAlcázarI need not play upon the instrument; but, said Olivero, it was well that I should be able to do so if called upon. My costume was to be a shortchulojacket and tight-hipped, loose-legged grey trousers, with a low-collared, unstarched shirt, and a broad-brimmed grey sombrero de Cordoba. With this hat, well tipped over my eyes, in moonlight or even spasmodic rose-and-gold bursts of coloured fire, recognition would be impossible at a distance; and I meant to keep at a distance from all the Duke's party—with one exception.By the time the plan was mapped out, it was nearly seven o'clock, but the O'Donnels still urged me to dine at the Cortijo de Santa Rufina. The Gloria would eat up the six miles distance in ten minutes; I could bathe and dress before 8.15, when dinner[pg 220]would be ready (a telegram had been sent to the servants from Cordoba), and rested and refreshed, I could start for Seville in the car again at half-past nine.So we flashed out across the Guadalquivir, by way of the bridge of Isabel Segunda, into that strange suburb which gave Trajan birth, and my family their name; ancient Trajana, now Triana, town of potters, picadores, and gypsies.Dark-browed boys playedtorerosto our car as bull, their coatsmuletas, sticks theirbanderillas, yelling and springing lithely aside as the enemy rushed on them. Girls, handsome as Carmen, flung us flowers, staring boldly eye to eye; and this was my welcome to the place near which the Casa Trianas had once lived and thought themselves great!Almost could I have seen the towers of the old house—now the property of the King—as we passed into open country again; but I did not speak, nor did the others, though the thought in my mind must have been in Pilar's and Colonel O'Donnel's.Five miles more, through falling dusk and sweet country scents and we turned off the main road into another, gleaming white as a path of snow in the opal twilight. Then, in a wide-reaching plantation of olives, spraying silver on a ruddy soil where glimmered irrigation tanks and grinding mills, we came upon a large, irregular clump of white buildings grouped together, and made one by a high wall with an open belfry at one corner.“Here we are at home!”exclaimed the Cherub with a contented sigh, as he gently touched Ropes' shoulder.“Welcome, dear friends, to the Cortijo de Santa Rufina. It, and all within its walls, is at your disposition.”We drove in through a wide gate in the outer wall, where there was a clamour of greeting from the steward, many servants, and more dogs, dogs of all races, who selected Pilar for their wildest demonstrations. In a second she was out of the car, and half drowned in a wave of tumultuous doghood. Laughing, shaking hands with the servants, patting or suppressing greyhounds, collies, setters, retrievers, she had never seemed so charming.[pg 221]This was therealPilar—Pilar at home; the Pilar it would be next to impossible to uproot from such associations. Again, poor Dick! And now he no longer tried to hide the loving admiration in his eyes. I think he would even have done his best to fondle a wild bull or two of her acquaintance had they been among the friends who gave her welcome.Away boomed the Gloria to the stables—the sole garage at the Cortijo—while we were bidden through the Moorish entrance-porch and wrought-ironcancelainto apatiosurrounded on all sides by an arcade, roofed with green and brown tiling. The supporting pillars were of pale pink brick, not marble, and the pavement was of brick also, interset with a pattern of small blue tiles. But the tiles were old and good; from a carved stone basin in the middle of the court sprang the tall crystal stem of a fountain, blossoming into diamonds; pearly arum lilies, pink azaleas, and pale green hydrangeas bloomed in huge white and blue and yellow pots from Triana, of the same beautiful shapes made before Santa Justa and Santa Rufina knew they were saints, and undertook to keep the Giralda from falling.The windows leading into the rooms surrounding thepatiowere large as doors, and all were hospitably open, giving through thin curtains glimpses of old furniture carefully grouped to please a woman's dainty taste. Pilar again—always Pilar! Here were herlaresandpenates; and she was a goddess among lesser household gods. I knew that it would be safer for Dick to say a hasty good-bye upon the threshold; but I knew also that no power on earth could force him to do it.“This is only a farm, you know,”said the girl, meekly, all the while dimpling with pride in her home and what she had made it;“for we are only farmers, aren't we, Papa.”Our rooms—Dick's and mine—were not overstocked with furniture; but there were two or three things for which an antiquary would have pawned his soul. On one side, our windows looked upon thepatio; on the other, we gazed through iron bars over olives and meadows where grain was green. There was no[pg 222]sound save the tinkling rain of the fountain, and now and then the sleepy note of a bird, or a far-away lowing of cattle—perhaps the welcoming bellow of Vivillo, the brown bull which was the sole possession of Carmona coveted by Pilar.The two servants who waited at dinner were wreathed in smiles at seeing again their master and mistress; and their occasional furtive glances of interest in my direction made me wonder if they had not received mysterious instructions as to how they must answer any questions concerning me. But, whatever those instructions might be, I was sure they would be loyally carried out; for the Cherub is a man servants would obey through torture until death, if these days were as the old.At half-past nine Ropes was ready to spin me back into Seville. We arrived earlier than need be; and having made an appointment to meet at a quiet hotel, where Ropes would await me from half-past eleven till half-past twelve, I decided to walk past Carmona's house and reconnoitre.I knew where to find it, in the Calle de las Dueñas; but if I had hoped for a tell-tale glimpse within, as in a London or Parisian mansion, I was disappointed. Once a Moorish palace, it showed a closed, secretive front to the narrow street. But I knew, for I had read, that within there were six courtyards, ninety marble pillars, half a dozen fountains, a garden of orange and magnolia trees, with myrtle hedges clipped to represent the ducal arms; that there were vast treasures of statuary, pictures by Velasquez, Murillo, and Alonso Cano; gold-inlaid plate armour; tapestry from the Netherlands not to be surpassed at the Royal Palace at Madrid.I knew that these splendours would loom large in the eyes of Lady Vale-Avon, and might count for something even with Monica, who confessed to a love of all things beautiful. I thought of the famous Carmona jewels, which would belong to the wife of the Duke, while she lived, as they had belonged to generations of Duchesses. Above all, I thought of the incomparable Blanca Laguna pearl and its glistening maids of honour, which, by this[pg 223]time perhaps, had been shown to Monica. There were few girls in Spain, or in the world, I remembered hearing my mother say, who could resist that pearl as a bride. And now it was offered to Monica, a penniless girl of eighteen, whose beauty formed her sole dowry.There, behind the cold reserve of those white walls with the shut, brass-studded doors and barred windows, she was being fêted by the Duke, dining on gold plate, in a tapestried room fragrant with orange flowers. I could see the pictures. I could see the look in Carmona's eyes as they turned to her, saying,“all this is yours if you will have it.”And Carmona's eyes were handsome eyes; I had to admit that, in justice.Would she hold true to me—true to a man with no palaces, no lands, no priceless pearls, and only half as many hundreds a year as her other lover had thousands? Would she be able to resist her mother, now that mother had seen with her own eyeshowmuch there was to fight for and to win?The question would come. But with it came a vision of Monica herself, pure and sweet as beautiful, loyal and loving as she was lovely. And I said to myself,“Yes, she will be true.”It was with the clear ringing of these words in my mind that I turned my back upon the house of Carmona.Once I had passed into theAlcázarwith Olivero's band of dancers and guitarists I was free to do as I pleased. And I pleased to escape from my laughing, chattering companions before the arrival of the Duke and his guests, and the illuminations in their honour. There was no better place to wait and watch for the opportunity I wanted, than in the mock-Moorish kiosk at the end of the lower garden. From there I could see without being seen; and the moment a chance came I should be ready to take it.It was early still, but Olivero lost no time in marshalling his little army into place, that they might make a good effect as atableau vivantwhen the great people came. He seated his six men with guitars, their sombreros at precisely the right angle on[pg 224]their glossy black heads, and in a row of chairs in front six young women in black dresses with black lace mantillas, the red and yellow ribbons of their castanets already in their hands. Then, at intervals, he grouped the dancers, youths, and pretty girls, carefully dressed in the costumes of different provinces, making a bouquet of bright colours in the light of a few concealed lamps which supplemented the silver radiance of the moon, now almost at the zenith.The minutes passed. The dancers talked in subdued tones which scarcely disturbed the nightingales. A breeze rustled the crisp leaves of the orange trees and myrtle hedges; far away the voice of the watchman told the hour of eleven, echoed by the chiming bells of a church clock; and the last stroke had not sounded when there was a burst of merry voices in a distant avenue. Carmona and his friends had come—late, of course—or there could have been no Andalucíans among them; and suddenly, as if on a signal, the gardens pulsed with rose-coloured light. In the pink blaze I saw Monica, slender and fair as a lily, in a white dress sparkling with silver; but I had only time to see that she walked beside Carmona, when the rose flame died down and left the garden pure and peaceful under the moon.For an instant the soft light seemed darkness, and I lost the white figure. When it sprang to my eyes again in a sharp emerald flash, while all the hidden fountains in the garden walks spouted jewels, others were grouped round it; only the gold crown of rippling hair shone out clear as a star for me among other women's dark coils and braids.Old ebony chairs with crimson velvet cushions and the Carmona arms in heavy gilding, had been sent to theAlcázarfrom the Duke's house, for the entertainment. The party sat down, and the dancing began, to theflamencomusic of guitars and the clacking of castanets; thefandango, thebolero, themalagueña, thechaquera vella; all the classical dances of old Spain, and each one a variant on the theme of love, the woman coy, coquettishly[pg 225]retreating; the man persuading or demanding, the woman yielding in passionate abandonment at last.In the midst of asevillanaI came out from the shadows of the kiosk and walked without a sound of rattling pebble or cracking twig, along a path which the moon had not yet found.The high backs of the ebony chairs were turned to me. I could not even see the heads of the people who sat in them; but I had watched them take their places, and I knew that Monica's chair was the outside one on the end, at the right.Everyone was absorbed in watching the dance. As it approached its tempestuous climax of joy and love, I moved into the deep shadow of a magnolia tree, close to Monica—so close that, reaching out from behind the round trunk which screened me, I touched her hand.With a start, she glanced up, expecting perhaps to find that the breeze had blown a rose-branch across her fingers. Instead, she saw my face; for I had taken off the wide-brimmed grey sombrero and bared my head to her.For a second she looked straight into my eyes, as if she doubted that she saw aright. Then, an unbelievable thing happened. Her eyes grew cold as glass. Her lips tightened into a line which I had not dreamed their soft curves could take. Her youth and beauty froze under my gaze. With a haughty lifting of her brows, and an indescribable movement of her shoulder which could mean nothing but scornful indifference, she turned away as if impatient at having lost a gesture of the dancers.Astounded, I stepped back; and so vast was the chasm of my amazement that I floundered in it bewildered, unable even to suffer.Then came a pang of such pain and anger as I had never known—anger not against the girl, but against Carmona; and the knife which pierced me was dipped in the poison of jealously. My impulse was to leap out from the shadow and strangle him. My hands tingled for his neck, and through the drumming of the blood in my ears I could hear the crack his spine would make[pg 226]as I twisted it. For that instant I was a madman. Then, something that was myself conquered.Horror of the savage thing just born in me overflowed in an icy flood that swept it, drowning, out of my soul. But never again, so long as I may live, shall I condemn a man who kills another in one blind moment of rage.Even when the red glaze was gone from before my eyes, I could not trust myself to stand there, looking at Carmona as he smiled and patronized the dancers by clapping his hands. I turned away, not stopping until I had regained the kiosk.There I sat down, elbows on knees, head in my hands, trying to analyse that look on Monica's face, trying to tell myself that I must have mis-read it—that such an expression as I imagined could not have been there for me.Perhaps, as I suddenly appeared behind a veil of flickering moonlight and shadow she had not known who I was. She had mistaken me for some impertinent stranger, and rather than give an alarm, she had hoped that a frown might rid her of the intruder. Then, I had gone without giving her a second chance to recognize me.After a few minutes of such reflections, I almost persuaded myself that I had been a fool and was wholly to blame for what I suffered. At least, I said, I owed it to her to make sure that the look had been for me, and the suspense must end to-night. I would know, even if I made her answer me under the eyes of Carmona and the others.But a moment later I saw that I need not be driven to such extremes.The first part of the dance was over; the Duke and his guests were walking through the gardens in the interval. They were coming my way—coming to the kiosk. As they advanced, I retreated into shadow. I let the group linger at the kiosk, admiring the beautifulazulejos; I let them move on; then, as Monica loitered purposely behind the others, drooping and evidently sad, I put myself in front of her.[pg 227]“Monica,”I said,“what has happened? You—”The girl flung up her head, and though there was a glitter of tears in her eyes and her face was white under the moon, she stared defiance.“Don't speak to me,”she said.“I never wish to see you again. I'm going to marry the Duke of Carmona.”

When the Cherub dies and is gathered to his Irish and Spanish fathers (far distant be the day!) he will not know a happy moment in Paradise unless he is doing something ingenuously kind for somebody. It is my conviction that he will have to be made a guardian angel; and I mentioned this theory to him as he took me to the house of Ramiro Olivero, ex-bull-fighter, present professor of Spanish dancing.

The others were waiting in the car, as, according to the Cherub's plan of campaign, he and I were to visit Olivero alone.

We climbed many stairs to the flat where the celebrated man lives and conducts his school for dancing. He it was who came to the door, and it was a sight worth seeing to watch his somewhat hard, middle-aged features relax in response to cherubic murmurings.

Colonel O'Donnel remembered Señor Olivero since the time when he was abanderillero; oh, incomparably the most brilliantbanderilleroof his day. Then, afterwards, what triumphs as atorero! Ah, that was something for an old admirer to remember. Not to regret, naturally, since the señor was as great an artist in his present profession as in that other doubtless sacrificed to family affections.

This gentleman whom he (Colonel O'Donnel) now ventured to introduce was from England, travelling with a friend from the States who wrote articles on Spain for well-known journals. The American could speak no Spanish, but with the gentleman[pg 219]from England it was like the native tongue. Therefore it was he who most often attended important ceremonies, and made notes for his friend to work up into articles. This entertainment in which Señor Olivero was assisting the Duke of Carmona, for instance; it would be all that was characteristic of Spain, as well as beautiful. If the señor would allow the gentleman from England to enter theAlcázaras one of his guitarists, an article could be made for the great American newspapers which would not only be a credit to the journalist, but would widely advertise the skill of Señor Olivero and his pupils.

If every man has his price, it was not derogatory to his merits that these pearls of flattery should be the price which bought Olivero. Not a penny was to be paid for the favour. When the word“money”was hinted, rather than spoken, the ex-hero of the bull-ring waved it away with a superb gesture. But he would be glad to see the articles when they appeared; and this was promised, for Dick must write them for the neglected papers he was supposed to represent.

In return for the promise (and the compliments), it was arranged that I should present myself at his house about ten o'clock (the dance was timed to begin at 10.45), there dress for my part, and be furnished with a guitar. Once inside theAlcázarI need not play upon the instrument; but, said Olivero, it was well that I should be able to do so if called upon. My costume was to be a shortchulojacket and tight-hipped, loose-legged grey trousers, with a low-collared, unstarched shirt, and a broad-brimmed grey sombrero de Cordoba. With this hat, well tipped over my eyes, in moonlight or even spasmodic rose-and-gold bursts of coloured fire, recognition would be impossible at a distance; and I meant to keep at a distance from all the Duke's party—with one exception.

By the time the plan was mapped out, it was nearly seven o'clock, but the O'Donnels still urged me to dine at the Cortijo de Santa Rufina. The Gloria would eat up the six miles distance in ten minutes; I could bathe and dress before 8.15, when dinner[pg 220]would be ready (a telegram had been sent to the servants from Cordoba), and rested and refreshed, I could start for Seville in the car again at half-past nine.

So we flashed out across the Guadalquivir, by way of the bridge of Isabel Segunda, into that strange suburb which gave Trajan birth, and my family their name; ancient Trajana, now Triana, town of potters, picadores, and gypsies.

Dark-browed boys playedtorerosto our car as bull, their coatsmuletas, sticks theirbanderillas, yelling and springing lithely aside as the enemy rushed on them. Girls, handsome as Carmen, flung us flowers, staring boldly eye to eye; and this was my welcome to the place near which the Casa Trianas had once lived and thought themselves great!

Almost could I have seen the towers of the old house—now the property of the King—as we passed into open country again; but I did not speak, nor did the others, though the thought in my mind must have been in Pilar's and Colonel O'Donnel's.

Five miles more, through falling dusk and sweet country scents and we turned off the main road into another, gleaming white as a path of snow in the opal twilight. Then, in a wide-reaching plantation of olives, spraying silver on a ruddy soil where glimmered irrigation tanks and grinding mills, we came upon a large, irregular clump of white buildings grouped together, and made one by a high wall with an open belfry at one corner.

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

We drove in through a wide gate in the outer wall, where there was a clamour of greeting from the steward, many servants, and more dogs, dogs of all races, who selected Pilar for their wildest demonstrations. In a second she was out of the car, and half drowned in a wave of tumultuous doghood. Laughing, shaking hands with the servants, patting or suppressing greyhounds, collies, setters, retrievers, she had never seemed so charming.[pg 221]This was therealPilar—Pilar at home; the Pilar it would be next to impossible to uproot from such associations. Again, poor Dick! And now he no longer tried to hide the loving admiration in his eyes. I think he would even have done his best to fondle a wild bull or two of her acquaintance had they been among the friends who gave her welcome.

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

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

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

Our rooms—Dick's and mine—were not overstocked with furniture; but there were two or three things for which an antiquary would have pawned his soul. On one side, our windows looked upon thepatio; on the other, we gazed through iron bars over olives and meadows where grain was green. There was no[pg 222]sound save the tinkling rain of the fountain, and now and then the sleepy note of a bird, or a far-away lowing of cattle—perhaps the welcoming bellow of Vivillo, the brown bull which was the sole possession of Carmona coveted by Pilar.

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

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

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

I knew that these splendours would loom large in the eyes of Lady Vale-Avon, and might count for something even with Monica, who confessed to a love of all things beautiful. I thought of the famous Carmona jewels, which would belong to the wife of the Duke, while she lived, as they had belonged to generations of Duchesses. Above all, I thought of the incomparable Blanca Laguna pearl and its glistening maids of honour, which, by this[pg 223]time perhaps, had been shown to Monica. There were few girls in Spain, or in the world, I remembered hearing my mother say, who could resist that pearl as a bride. And now it was offered to Monica, a penniless girl of eighteen, whose beauty formed her sole dowry.

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

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

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

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

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

It was early still, but Olivero lost no time in marshalling his little army into place, that they might make a good effect as atableau vivantwhen the great people came. He seated his six men with guitars, their sombreros at precisely the right angle on[pg 224]their glossy black heads, and in a row of chairs in front six young women in black dresses with black lace mantillas, the red and yellow ribbons of their castanets already in their hands. Then, at intervals, he grouped the dancers, youths, and pretty girls, carefully dressed in the costumes of different provinces, making a bouquet of bright colours in the light of a few concealed lamps which supplemented the silver radiance of the moon, now almost at the zenith.

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

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

Old ebony chairs with crimson velvet cushions and the Carmona arms in heavy gilding, had been sent to theAlcázarfrom the Duke's house, for the entertainment. The party sat down, and the dancing began, to theflamencomusic of guitars and the clacking of castanets; thefandango, thebolero, themalagueña, thechaquera vella; all the classical dances of old Spain, and each one a variant on the theme of love, the woman coy, coquettishly[pg 225]retreating; the man persuading or demanding, the woman yielding in passionate abandonment at last.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then came a pang of such pain and anger as I had never known—anger not against the girl, but against Carmona; and the knife which pierced me was dipped in the poison of jealously. My impulse was to leap out from the shadow and strangle him. My hands tingled for his neck, and through the drumming of the blood in my ears I could hear the crack his spine would make[pg 226]as I twisted it. For that instant I was a madman. Then, something that was myself conquered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[pg 227]“Monica,”I said,“what has happened? You—”

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

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