XXXI

[pg 255]XXXIBehind an Iron Grating“Say,”remarked Dick in a stage whisper,“there'd be a big drop in the bee industry if all the world turned Protestant and bought no more great wax candles.”We were standing inside the Moorish arch of the Puerta del Perdon, in the Court of Oranges. Beyond, where the stuffed crocodile swung in a light breeze, was the entrance to the cathedral, black as the mouth of a cave. The wind which rocked that huge reptile—the gift of a disappointed Sultan—sent the petals of ten thousand orange blossoms drifting over our heads in a perfumed snow-storm. Past us trooped a dark-robed brotherhood, each man with his tall candle raining wax on the grass-grown stones of the old court.This it was which had drawn forth Dick's reflection; but I scarcely heard his words. I was watching for Monica; and my last chance must come soon if it were to come at all.Pilar and her father were not with us. They had gone into the cathedral, where they had secured seats not far from the royal chapel, and in the best position to hear the Miserere. Though it was early still, not quite nine o'clock, vast crowds were gathering and it was possible, they thought, that Carmona and his guests were already in their places. If they were seen there, Colonel O'Donnel would send out a messenger (a man employed in the cathedral) with a word for me.Earlier, this person had come to the hotel, where he had been told to look well at me that he might not fail to recognize me again. And Dick and I had not stood on sentinel duty for fifteen[pg 256]minutes when he appeared, beating through the opposing tide of the multitude as it swept towards the cathedral.“His worship the Colonel O'Donnel, wished their worships the two señoritos, to know that those they wished to find were not visible in the cathedral.”“Could they be there, and invisible?”I asked.“The cathedral is very dimly lighted; and they might not be seen if they were in some chapel. There are several with many people in them, and the doors are locked.”“Is that allowed?”“The people have given something to a verger not to let others in. I have power of the same kind, if any señor wished me to use it.”“Here they come!”whispered Dick.“Carmona, Lady Vale-Avon, and Lady Monica.”We stepped farther back into shadow, though such precaution was hardly needed. It was so dim in the Court of Oranges that the crowd groped its way over the cracked, uneven pavement. Only because they were close upon us, and he was watching, had Dick been able to make out the faces we knew.“Stop with us,”I said to Colonel O'Donnel's messenger.“You shall have a hundred pesetas if you will open the door of an empty chapel for me, and lock it again when I give the word.”“But I fear there are no empty ones—”he began.“Then make one empty. Can you do that—for a hundred pesetas?”“Yes, señor, I think I can.”By this time Monica, still in her black mantilla, had flitted past us between her mother and the Duke, but we were following. Dim as it was in the court, the moon looked out from behind the Giralda tower, and it was not dark enough for my project. Inside the cathedral, however (save where blazed the Holy Week monument, an illuminated temple of white and gold), was a mysterious darkness. Not the hundreds of great wax candles sufficed to light the aisles in that vast forest of stone.[pg 257]Stumbling, groping to pass through a hanging veil of shadow, thousands of men and women drifted aimlessly to and fro, themselves black as the shadows they fought, save here and there some soldier whose uniform waked a brief flame of red and gold, or a hooded brother who glowed purple under a lighted pillar.Purposely we pushed against the people before us, so that in a space black as a lake of ink the trio we followed was separated. The rush of people from behind was so sudden—so well managed by us,—that it took the Duke unawares. The three were caught in the eddy, divided, and before they could come together again I had my arm through Monica's, and was dragging her away, the messenger clinging to me closely.“Don't be frightened,”I said.“It's I—Ramón. I have to speak with you.”She looked up at me, her pale face dim as a spirit's in the dark.“Shame!”she stammered brokenly.“To force me like this—you, who have—”“Done nothing except love you too well; and you must give me the chance to win you back. You owe it to me,”I said almost fiercely; and she was silenced.“Monica! where are you?”I heard Lady Vale-Avon's voice call, and could have thanked her for giving me the direction to avoid.“Take us to that empty chapel quickly,”I said to the man. Then he, who would have known how to find his way in that stone forest blindfold, steered us through the sea of people, and into a haven beyond the waves. Not a chapel was lighted; but as my eyes grew used to the gloom I could see faces on the other side of the tall, shut gates of openwork iron which we passed.“I have the key of this one. I will promise the people a better place if they'll come out,”whispered the messenger, stopping before a pair of these closed doors, and unlocking it with a great key.I heard him speciously informing a group of shadows that[pg 258]they would be too far from the music to hear it well. He had a friend who would open another chapel nearer. Eagerly ten or twenty persons snapped at the bait, flocked out, and the instant their backs were turned, I half dragged, half carried Monica in. Then before she could escape, if she had wished to try, the great iron gates were shut and locked upon us.“They will be looking everywhere for you,”I said.“Come with me to the back where it is so dark that no one can see us. This chapel must seem to be empty.”“I want to be found,”the girl answered cruelly.“I'm going to marry the Duke.”“If you love him and not me, I shan't lift my hand to keep you,”I said.“The other night I believed it was so, and made up my mind to trouble you no more. But Miss O'Donnel said—”“Miss O'Donnel!”exclaimed Monica.“I wonder you can speak of her to me.”Her voice quivered with angry scorn, yet my heart leaped with joy at the words which confirmed Pilar's suspicions and my hopes.“She's as loyally your friend as I am loyally your lover,”I assured her.“Now listen. There are things which you must hear; and if when you've heard them you ask me to take you to your mother and Carmona, I'll obey instantly.”Then, without giving her time to cut me short, I began to talk of the letter I had written at Manzanares, and how I sent it, and what it had said.“Did you get it?”I asked.“No such letter as that. It was a very different one—a horrible letter. Oh, Ramón! if it were true; ifyouhad been true! If you could have gone on loving me!”She broke into sobbing, and hid her face between her hands.“Don't dare to doubt that I did, and always will. Tell me what the letter said?”I pulled her hands down, too roughly perhaps, and held them fast in mine.She tried to check her sobs.“I could show you the letter if there were a light. Since that day I've carried it with me, so that[pg 259]I could look at it sometimes, and have strength to hate you if my heart failed.”“My own darling—mine again,”I soothed her.“It's been a horrible plot. If that letter was not full of love and longing for you, it was forged; no doubt after the handwriting of the one I really sent.”“You mean my mother—would do a thing like that?”“She might have justified it by telling herself that the end sanctified the means.”“I know—she was ready to do almost anything to turn me from you,”Monica admitted, leaning against me so confidingly that all I had suffered was forgotten.“I couldn't have believed this of her; but—she did tell me the night before Manzanares that at Toledo she heard you calling Pilar O'Donnel,‘darling.’‘Young Mr. O'Donnel seems very fond of his sister,’mother said, looking straight at me, though she seemed to speak innocently.‘I heard him call her“darling girl.”’You can imagine how I felt! But I hoped she was mistaken, or that she'd invented it to make me unhappy; so I wouldn't let myself beveryunhappy, only a little distressed. Because, you know, Miss O'Donnel is awfully pretty and perfectly fascinating. Mother said, the night we were at Manzanares, that she was one of those girls whom most men fall irresistibly in love with; and—and I loved you so much, I couldn't help being jealous.”“As if any man could evenseepoor little Pilar, when you were near!”I exclaimed, forgetting Dick's difference of opinion.“Oh, I had faith in you, then. But next morning that pretty Mariquita handed me a letter, which I was sure was from you, as she hid it behind a tin of hot water. I was taking it, when mother saw, and snatched it away. You can't imagine the things I said to her, to make her give it back. I was so furious, that for once in my life I wasn't in the least afraid, and I would have tried to rush past her and run out to you, when she'd refused to give the letter up, but I wasn't dressed. My room had no door of its own. I had to go through mother's room to get[pg 260]out; and before I knew what she was doing, she'd slammed the door between us, locking it on her side. I hadn't even a proper window, only a little barred, square thing, high up in the wall. I couldn't scream for help, even if I hadn't been ashamed to make a scene in a strange hotel; so what was I to do.“She kept me there, wild with rage against her, for quite an hour after I was dressed and ready to dart out when I had the chance; but at last she unlocked the door, looking very grave.‘I've opened your letter,’she said,‘and read it, as it was my duty and my right to do. It is different from what I expected, and I've decided after all that it's as well you should have it.’“Then she handed me a torn envelope, and I recognized it as the one we had crumpled up between us when she snatched it away. Your handwriting was on it, and I never doubted it was yours inside, though it looked as if you'd written in a hurry, with a bad pen. No name was signed; but the letter said you thought it best to tell me, without waiting longer, that you feared we'd both been hasty and made a mistake in our feelings. Our meeting was romantic, and we'd been carried away by our youth and hot blood. Now you'd had time to see that it would be unwise of me to give up a man like the Duke of Carmona for one unworthy enough to have fallen in love with another girl. Accordingly, you released me from all obligations, and took it for granted that you were also free. Then you bade me good-bye, wishing me a happy future in case your car and the Duke's happened to go on by different ways. Do you wonder I tried to hate you, and that I said‘yes’the very next night, when the Duke asked me again if I wouldn't change my mind and marry him?”For answer, I caught her against my breast, and we clung to each other as if we could never part.“Such a promise is no promise,”I said at last.“I have you, and I don't mean to let you go, lest I lose you for ever. Monica, will you trust yourself to me, and run away with me to-night?”“Yes,”she whispered.“I daren't go back to them. But what shall we do?”[pg 261]“I'll tell you what I've been thinking,”I said.“My car isn't far off. Colonel O'Donnel and Pilar, who'd do anything for you and me, are in the cathedral. Just outside this chapel the man who locked us in is waiting for my signal to open the door. With the O'Donnels and Dick Waring to see you through, will you motor with me to Cadiz, take ship for Gibraltar, and marry me on English soil?”“Suppose there should be no ship for days?”she hesitated.“There is one nearly every day; but at worst I can hire a boat of some sort.”“Once we were in Gibraltar, you'd be out of reach if the Duke tried to take revenge,”she said.“Yes, Iwillgo! I love you and I can't give you up again. Oh, Ramón, I never would have promised to marry him, if I hadn't longed to show you that—that I didn't care, and that there was someone who wanted me very much, if you didn't.”“How like a woman!”I exclaimed, laughing—for I could laugh now.“He has only kissed my hand,”she went on,“and I hated even that.”“Yet you're wearing his brooch,”a returning flash of jealousy made me say;“and a mantilla, to please him.”“The brooch is his mother's. So is the mantilla. She at least has been kind; so I let her put them both on for me to-day, when she asked.”“Kind? When there's time I'll tell you one or two things. But now there's no time for anything except to take you away.”“Listen! The Miserere has begun,”she said.“Has it been long? I heard it only now. Can we get out before it's over?”“Of course we can—though not quite as easily, perhaps, as if the crowd were moving with us. However, we can't afford to wait.”“What wonderful music!”Monica whispered.“I wish I dared to feel it were blessing us.”“Yes, feel it so,”I said, and involuntarily was silent to listen[pg 262]for an instant to the melodious flood which swept from aisle to aisle in golden billows. Out from the wave of organ music and men's voices, boyish soprano notes sprayed high, flinging their bright crystals up, up, until they fell, shattered, from the vaulted ceiling of stone.From each dimly seen column shot forth one of those slender-stemmed, flaming white lilies of light, such as had bloomed in Our Lady's garden, as thepasosmoved blossoming through the streets. It seemed as if they might have been gathered and replanted here, to lighten the darkness; and as the music soared and sank, its waves set the lily-flames flickering.I peered out, and saw my man hovering near. In the gloom he did not catch the signal I gave him with my hand, but when I shook a handkerchief between the gratings he came quickly. As he unlocked the doors I slid the promised bribe into his palm; and having glanced about to make sure as far as possible that we were not watched, I called Monica.“Take us out by the nearest way,”I said; and the man began to hurry us officiously through the crowd.Monica clung to me tightly, and I could feel the tremblings that ran through her body. My heart was pounding too; for it is when the ship is nearest home, after a stormy voyage, that the captain remembers he has nerves. It seemed too marvellous to be true, that the girl was mine at last, and yet—what could separate us, now that I held her close against my side, and she was ready to go with me, out of her world into mine?“This way, this way, señorito,”our guide warned me, plucking at my arm as I steered ahead, confused by a thousand moving shadows. I followed, brushing sharply against a tall man in conicalcapuchaand trailing robe of blue. He turned, his masked face close to mine, so close that even in the dusk I caught a flash of glittering eyes. Then, giving me a sudden push, he cried out,“Help—murder! An anarchist—a free-thinker! To the rescue!”It was Carmona's voice, and I knew instantly that he must[pg 263]have borrowed this dress from some friend in the cathedral—perhaps a member of thecofradìato which he himself belonged—so that he could search for me and Monica, without being seen by us.Thrusting the girl behind me, yet keeping her close, I hurled him away, but he sprang at me again, and this time something glittered in his right hand. I fought with him for it, and pulled a slim length of steel up through his closed fingers, so that the sharp dagger-blade must have cut him to the bone. He gave a cry, and relaxed his grasp; but though he was disabled for the instant a dozen men in the crowd, which swirled round us now, caught and held me fast. Monica was wrenched from me; the dagger had fallen to the ground (but not before I had seen it was of Toledo make); the figure in the bluecapuchawas swept out of my sight, and I was fighting like a madman in a strait-jacket for freedom.[pg 264]XXXIIOn the Road to CadizIt was a mouse who gnawed a hole in the net that entangled the lion.Now, I am no lion in importance, nor was Colonel O'Donnel's messenger of as little significance as a mouse; yet he was the last creature to whom I would have looked for succour in a moment of stress. Nevertheless to him I owed my rescue.“A mistake, a mistake,”he chirped, jumping about, bird-like, just outside the circle of struggling men.“I am a verger here; this gentleman was with me. He did nothing. He is a most respectable and twice wealthy person, a tourist whom I guide. He is innocent—no anarchist, no free-thinker. That other—that pretended brother—has made a practical joke. See, he has run away to escape consequences. There is nothing against this noble señor; you have it on the word of a verger.”Because it was bewilderingly dark, and they might have got the wrong man; because, too, the verger was probably right, and it had been a joke played upon them by a person who had now disappeared, the twelve or fifteen men who surrounded me fell back shamefacedly, glad on second thoughts to melt away before they could be identified and reproached for disturbing the public peace, and spoiling the music to which their King listened.I was free, but I would not leave the cathedral yet, for my hope was to find Monica again. I wandered in every direction, while the verger went off to bring Dick and the O'Donnels to meet me in the Orange Court.[pg 265]Pilar's delight in the first part of my story was dashed by the sequel. Of course, she said, it must come right in the end, since Monica and I understood each other at last. But just for the moment everything seemed difficult. The Duke was sure now that I was Casa Triana, and not Cristóbal O'Donnel. He would almost certainly make all the trouble he could, and a man of his influence could make a good deal. As his attempt to stick a dagger into me—by way of a quick solution—had been covered by thecapuchaof acofradìa, I could not take revenge by laying a counter accusation. I might say I had recognized his voice, and that I thought I had recognized the dagger bought in Toledo; but I could prove nothing, and the Duke would score.Still, as the Cherub remarked consolingly, he could not do much worse than force me out of Spain. Neither I, nor anyone else, had ever said in so many words that I was Cristóbal O'Donnel. If people had taken my identity for granted because of a few round-about hints, and because for a joke I had borrowed a friend's uniform for a day or two, nothing very serious could be made out of that after all; and as Cristóbal really was on leave, he need not be involved. He was a good officer, whose services were valued, and I was not to worry lest harm should come upon him. I need think only of Monica and of myself. Had I formed any idea of what to do next?“I must get Monica out of Carmona's house,”I said.“You'll have to lie in wait and snatch her from under their noses next time they show them,”suggested Dick;“unless—”“Unless?”“Carmona keeps his indoors until he's arranged to have yours politely deported.”“I can't be got rid of in an hour.”“You could to-morrow.”“I'm afraid you can,”sighed the Cherub,“and that, though I shall do my best, I may be powerless to help you.”“What if it were known that he saved the King yesterday?”Pilar asked her father.[pg 266]“The King is going away to-morrow. You know, he's off to England in a few days. Besides, the incident to-day will be hushed up. The King will know, of course, and a few others; but it will be kept out of the papers,—anyhow, until they've got their hands on both the men concerned.”“I've still got to-night,”I said,“and it's not eleven yet. I hoped that in the confusion Monica had given her mother and Carmona the slip, and that if I waited here I might find her again. I thought she might try to get back to the chapel where we had our talk, trusting that I'd look for her there. But she didn't come, and I searched everywhere in vain before I tried watching the crowd pass through the Court of Oranges. Now, I'm certain that Carmona or Lady Vale-Avon must have pounced upon her while I was surrounded, and forced her away. No doubt they're at home long ago. Why shouldn't I appeal to the English consul, and say that the Duke of Carmona's detaining an English girl in his house against her will?”“No use,”said the Cherub.“She's under age, and she's with her mother, who's visiting the Duchess.”“Then I'll go to Carmona's door and make such a row that they'll be obliged to let me in.”“You'd get into a police cell instead. A man's house is his castle, especially when it's a palace and he's a Duke.”I was silenced. I knew the Cherub was right; but it seemed monstrous that in this twentieth century such tyranny should divide a girl from her lover.When I had thought for a moment I said,“Anyhow, I shall go to the house and try to bribe a servant. Once in, I'd not come out without Monica. I've done two satisfactory things to-day by bribery and corruption, and I don't see why I shouldn't bring it off the third time.”“The Duke's servants have been in the employ of the family for years, and their fathers and grandfathers before them. No money would bribe them to deceive their master and mistress,”said the Cherub.[pg 267]“I shouldn't have thought either the Duke or his mother capable of inspiring such devotion.”“It isn't devotion—it's fear. To an unfaithful servant in that house—well, almost anything might happen.”“Have you any advice to give me, then?”I asked, in despair.The Cherub shook his head.“The prudent thing would be to go away to-night, and trust Lady Monica's loyalty. She can't be forced into marrying the Duke, you know; and if she breaks the engagement he'll have to let her alone, for dignity's sake.”“That might be prudent; but of course I won't do it.”“Of course you won't,”returned the Cherub, as if it went without saying.“Very well, then; matters are desperate, and desperate remedies must be tried; things can't be worse than they are. I shall hang about Carmona's house early in the morning, and when the first person comes out I'll go in. If I don't come out, you will know what's become of me; and I don't suppose in these days even a Duke can kill a man without getting into trouble?”“He would merely have you arrested as a housebreaker,”said the Cherub.“Well, I should have seen Monica first, and perhaps have got her on the right side of the door.”“We'll have a go at the business together,”said Dick.“It would be more sociable.”“All right, thank you,”said I.“Then something's settled; and these best of friends can go home and sleep.”“Sleep!”echoed Pilar scornfully.“Oh, if I were a man, and could dosomethingto punish the Duke!”“I wish you could set your bull at him,”said Dick.“Only, now I think of it, it'shisbull still.”Try as we might, it was impossible to persuade either Colonel O'Donnel or Pilar that they ought to return quietly to bed, if not to sleep. No, they would do nothing of the kind. Besides, no properly disposed person within ten miles of Seville would lie in bed that night. Processions would go on till early morning. Many[pg 268]people would watch them, or spend the hours till early mass in prayer in the cathedral, which would be open all night. Why should not the O'Donnel family do as others did?There was no answer to this; and it was finally arranged that, if they wished to rest at all, it should be at the hotel in the Plaza de San Fernando, where we had dined. That was to be the rendezvous; and the Cherub would engage the verger we knew to watch the Duke's house in the morning, bringing news of our fate to the hotel—if we did not bring it ourselves.Never—if I live beyond the allotted threescore years and ten—shall I forget that strange night of Holy Thursday in Seville.Dick and I wandered through the streets, and in the Plaza de la Constitución, where electric lamps and moonlight mingled bleakly, while never-endingcofradìaspassed.A sky of violet was like a veil of silky gauze, and as the moon slid down the steeps of heaven the vast dome paled. One by one the stars went out like spent matches; dawn was on its way. Electric lights flared and died, leaving a pearly dusk more mysterious than any twilight which falls with night.The crowds had thinned; but silent brotherhoods moved through streets where there was no other sound than the rustling of their feet, the tap of their leaders' silver batons. So faint was the dawn-dusk, that they were droves of shadows on their way back into night, their candle-lights lost stars. Now and then the clink of a baton brought to some half-shuttered window a face, to be presently joined by other faces, peering down at the dark processions of men and black-robed, penitent women.Outside the great east door of the cathedral halted apaso, like a huge golden car. Christ was nailed to a cross not yet lifted into place. A Roman soldier, of exaggerated height and sardonic features, stood reading the parchment with the mocking inscription about to be nailed above the thorn-crowned head. His evil mouth was curled in a satirical smile. Two centurions in armour sat their impatient horses, and gave directions for raising the cross. The effect was startling; for in this pale beginning of light,[pg 269]and the atmosphere of tingling exaltation which steeped the town, it was difficult not to believe that the terrible carved figures of wood had life, and that with the eyes of one's flesh one beheld the world's great tragedy.Somehow the impression of horror was but deepened by the fact that the bearers had come out from under the curtains of thepaso, to take off the large pads they wore on their heads, to drink water, and smoke cigarettes with the penitents who had rolled up the masks from their pale, damp faces. They might have been comrades of the Roman soldiers, in their obliviousness of that tortured form on the cross.It was not yet five o'clock when Dick and I plunged into the cool gloom of the cathedral, passing the spot where Carmona had struck at me, and the chapel where I had taken Monica. The stones were slippery as the floor of a ballroom, with wax dropped from innumerable candles, and the air was heavy with the smoke of stale incense.The searchlight of dawn could scarcely penetrate the black curtains which throughout Holy Week had draped the cathedral; therefore a solitary beam, like a bar of gold, slanted in through one superb window.The amethysts, emeralds, and rubies of incomparable painted glass transformed the yellow bar into a rainbow which streamed down the length of the majestic aisle and struck full upon a golden altar. Then slowly the jewelled band moved from the gold carvings, the flames dying as it passed. Travelling, still like a searchlight, it found the prostrate forms of sleeping men exhausted by their vigils, snatched out of veiling darkness kneeling women clad in black, and at last rested on the Holy Week monument itself, paled its myriad candles, and made pools of liquid gold on the vestments of priests who had knelt all night in adoration of the Host.“Say,”said Dick, half whispering,“I don't gush as a rule; but doesn't it look like the light of salvation coming to save lost souls?”Not a hotel in Seville had shut its doors that night of Holy[pg 270]Thursday; not aconcièrgehad done more than nod and wake out of a broken dream, for there had been an excited coming and going through all the dark hours.At six o'clock Dick and I were at thefonda, inquiring for Colonel O'Donnel and his daughter. They had come in at two, and were now asleep, it seemed; but had left a note for the señores. In this note we were assured that the friendly verger of last night's adventure would be lurking in the neighbourhood of Carmona's house as early as six o'clock, and should we want him we would know where he was to be found.We took bedrooms, bathed, dressed again, and after hot coffee and rolls decided that is was time to go on guard. To be sure, it was absurdly early; but by this time the Duke's household might be astir, and we must not risk letting Monica be carried away before we had had a chance to practise the gentle art of housebreaking.The clocks of Seville were spasmodically telling the hour of seven when we entered the narrow and dusky lane of the Calle de las Dueñas. So fast asleep were the shuttered windows that our mission seemed a fool's errand; but as we came in sight of the Duke's closed door the Cherub's messenger loomed out of the shadows.Unshaven and haggard, his eyes glittered like black beads in the daylight; and he greeted us excitedly.“Señores,”he began,“I was going to look for you at the hotel. A thing has happened. The Señor Colonel told me I must watch the house of His Grace the Duke, and let you know when you came if anyone had been out or in. Who would think of people starting upon a journey before the day is awake? But so it is. The Duke, whom I have seen in other years, has gone away in an automobile with his honourable mother and two other ladies.”“You are sure it was he?”I asked, completely taken aback.“Sure, my señorito. The car was a large grey car. And”—his face grew sly as a squirrel's—“I can tell you where it is going, if you would like to know.”[pg 271]“I want to know all you can tell,”I said.“Well, the grey car arrived a little before half-past six, I should think. In it there was only the young man who drives, dressed in leather.‘What is going to happen?’I asked myself. It seemed better to wait and see than run to the hotel to say,‘there's an automobile at the door for the Duke,’and perhaps find it gone, no one could tell where, when I got back. But I do not sleep on my feet. There are always ideas running in my head. I pretended to be strolling past, and stopping for a look at such a fine machine. Perhaps I had matches in my pocket, perhaps not; in any case I asked the young man in leather to give me a light for my cigarette. He did, and it was a natural thing to fall into talk.‘You make an early start,’I said. He nodded.‘Going far?’‘To Cadiz to-day, by Jerez.’That is all, honoured señores; but I tell it for what it is worth. A few minutes later the grand people came out, and the automobile shot away.”“Did they put on luggage?”I asked.“All the automobile would hold.”“By Jove!”exclaimed Dick.“Carmona's thrown sand in our eyes this time. Who'd have supposed he'd turn tail and run away like a coward in the midst of the Holy Week show, with the King still in town?”“I was a fool not to expect the unexpected,”I said.“If anyone except Colonel O'Donnel's man had told me I should have been between two minds whether to accept the story or not. But O'Donnel called him a trusty fellow; and he served me well last night. If we wait to verify his story, by the time we find out it's true the grey car will have got too long a start. I don't like Carmona's stealing off. It looks as if there were something up.”“He showed last night that he was desperate,”said Dick.“I guess we'd better get on the road before much grass grows.”“You're the best of friends,”said I. And paying the verger well for his services, we hurried back to the hotel to find Ropes and have the car got ready.It was still very early, and the Cherub and Pilar had not had[pg 272]many hours beauty sleep; but we could not leave for an indefinite absence without bidding them good-bye; and we were on our way to knock at Colonel O'Donnel's door when Pilar appeared from the room adjoining.A moment, and she understood everything.“You'll follow!”she exclaimed, without waiting to hear my plans.“And I'll go with him,”said Dick, looking wistfully at her; for he had not had his answer yet, and who could tell when he would have it now, or what it would be when it came?“Of course. I knew you would,”Pilar replied. And a light leaped up in her dark eyes. If it meant nothing warmer, it meant approval.“You'll want to go at once. Oh, Iamsorry you'll miss the fair. You don't know what a fairyland Seville is, with miles of streets and park roofed in with arches of coloured lights, like jewels; and papa has a tent in the gayest place, where we stay all day, and see our friends, and it's such fun visiting the booths and side-shows! But maybe next spring you'll come back for theferiawith your bride, Don Ramón; and as for you, Señor Waring—”“As for me?”repeated Dick, anxiously.“Am I not to come back before that?”“You're to come back when you like, and—papa will be glad to see you,”she answered, just as any conventional little señorita might have answered. But at least she had the kindness to blush; and I would have moved away to give Dick a last chance if at that moment the Cherub had not come out of his room.Instantly Pilar dashed into explanations, and between the three of us he soon had the history of events.No one on earth looks less practical than the dreamy-eyed, soft-voiced Cherub; yet it was he who thought of practical details which we had forgotten. He it was who reminded us that it would not be prudent to take Ropes away from Seville. As the man who said he had discovered the bomb, his evidence would be wanted, and if he disappeared it would look mysterious. His real connection with theMarquésof Casa Triana might be unearthed by the police; and because of that miserable affair at[pg 273]Barcelona, whose consequences were continually cropping up, some hideous story might be concocted and believed.Dick and I unhesitatingly decided to take the Cherub's advice, and leave Ropes behind. He was engaged in getting the car ready, and would no doubt be disappointed to hear that he was to be temporarily abandoned; but he would see the wisdom of such a course, and might be trusted to guard my interests. As for Dick, he might turn his back on the proceedings in Seville without danger, for he posed only as the employer of a man who had found the bomb; besides, as I suggested without glancing at Pilar, he could come back in a few days in case he were wanted to give evidence.Thus it was settled; at eight o'clock we had said good-bye to Pilarcita and the Cherub, softening the farewell with a hopeful“au revoir”; and with Ropes staring disconsolately after us, we flashed out of the Plaza de San Fernando.I drove, with Dick beside me, for there was no longer need for subterfuge. Carmona knew me for what I was, and I could help Monica more by defying him than by playing the old waiting game, of which I was tired.It seemed strange to be racing across country again in the car, after those fevered days in Seville. With the steering-wheel in my hand, the steady thrum of the motor seemed to say,“You'll do it; you'll do it;—I'll help you to do it.”The air was made of perfume—orange blossoms and acacias; and the vast flowery plain where Seville is queen gave us a tolerable road, on which the car ran lightly. Soaring snow peaks of fantastic shapes walled the green arena of rolling meadows, and the day was like a day of June.Save for the grey Lecomte, scarcely a motor had we seen since leaving Biarritz, except in Madrid; but now, when I tried to decipher the road hieroglyphics, the dust showed more than one track of pneus. Cars had come to Seville from Madrid forSemana Santa, and had evidently run out this way for a spin more than once. As I had not Ropes' detective talent I was unable to distinguish the Lecomte's tyre-marks from others.[pg 274]In sight of the conspicuous church tower at Utrera—ancient home of outlaws—we came upon a dusty white line diverging to Ecija. Pausing to question a road-mender, I remembered Colonel O'Donnel's story of the Seven Men of Ecija, and the curious bond between them and the Dukes of Carmona. But what brought the tale to my mind—unless it was the name of Ecija on the road-map and signpost, or the fact that we were now in the real heart of brigand-land—I could not have told.Yes, said the road-mender, he had seen an automobile go by—a big one, not long ago, steering as if for Jerez. Was it grey? He would not be sure, but at all events the thing was so grey with dust that had there been another colour underneath, no one could have seen it. Ladies in the car? Well, he was not positive, for it had gone by like a cannon-ball in a cloud of smoke; but there were several persons inside, and it was the only motor which had passed him to-day. Several cars had appeared in the distance yesterday, but they had turned back on the Seville side of Utrera.One automobile, a big one, apparently grey, and with several persons inside, had gone by at a tremendous pace not long before. That sounded as if the car we chased could not be far away. Our eyes searched the tell-tale dust, and found the sleek, straight trail of a pneu in the midst of wobbling cart tracks. We had but to follow that straight trail, then, I said, to come up with Carmona and interfere with his new plans.Now we were racing through a wide region of salt marsh, where within enclosures grazed hundreds of fierce black bulls, sooner or later to die in the arena. The country became desolate, and curiously sad. We met no more peasants' carts or laden donkeys as the road began to undulate among the foothills of distant mountain ranges.“What an ideal place for a band of Colonel O'Donnel'sbandidos, eh?”said Dick; then drew in his breath with a sharpness that cut the sentence short, as we whirled round a hummock at a turning of the road.

[pg 255]XXXIBehind an Iron Grating“Say,”remarked Dick in a stage whisper,“there'd be a big drop in the bee industry if all the world turned Protestant and bought no more great wax candles.”We were standing inside the Moorish arch of the Puerta del Perdon, in the Court of Oranges. Beyond, where the stuffed crocodile swung in a light breeze, was the entrance to the cathedral, black as the mouth of a cave. The wind which rocked that huge reptile—the gift of a disappointed Sultan—sent the petals of ten thousand orange blossoms drifting over our heads in a perfumed snow-storm. Past us trooped a dark-robed brotherhood, each man with his tall candle raining wax on the grass-grown stones of the old court.This it was which had drawn forth Dick's reflection; but I scarcely heard his words. I was watching for Monica; and my last chance must come soon if it were to come at all.Pilar and her father were not with us. They had gone into the cathedral, where they had secured seats not far from the royal chapel, and in the best position to hear the Miserere. Though it was early still, not quite nine o'clock, vast crowds were gathering and it was possible, they thought, that Carmona and his guests were already in their places. If they were seen there, Colonel O'Donnel would send out a messenger (a man employed in the cathedral) with a word for me.Earlier, this person had come to the hotel, where he had been told to look well at me that he might not fail to recognize me again. And Dick and I had not stood on sentinel duty for fifteen[pg 256]minutes when he appeared, beating through the opposing tide of the multitude as it swept towards the cathedral.“His worship the Colonel O'Donnel, wished their worships the two señoritos, to know that those they wished to find were not visible in the cathedral.”“Could they be there, and invisible?”I asked.“The cathedral is very dimly lighted; and they might not be seen if they were in some chapel. There are several with many people in them, and the doors are locked.”“Is that allowed?”“The people have given something to a verger not to let others in. I have power of the same kind, if any señor wished me to use it.”“Here they come!”whispered Dick.“Carmona, Lady Vale-Avon, and Lady Monica.”We stepped farther back into shadow, though such precaution was hardly needed. It was so dim in the Court of Oranges that the crowd groped its way over the cracked, uneven pavement. Only because they were close upon us, and he was watching, had Dick been able to make out the faces we knew.“Stop with us,”I said to Colonel O'Donnel's messenger.“You shall have a hundred pesetas if you will open the door of an empty chapel for me, and lock it again when I give the word.”“But I fear there are no empty ones—”he began.“Then make one empty. Can you do that—for a hundred pesetas?”“Yes, señor, I think I can.”By this time Monica, still in her black mantilla, had flitted past us between her mother and the Duke, but we were following. Dim as it was in the court, the moon looked out from behind the Giralda tower, and it was not dark enough for my project. Inside the cathedral, however (save where blazed the Holy Week monument, an illuminated temple of white and gold), was a mysterious darkness. Not the hundreds of great wax candles sufficed to light the aisles in that vast forest of stone.[pg 257]Stumbling, groping to pass through a hanging veil of shadow, thousands of men and women drifted aimlessly to and fro, themselves black as the shadows they fought, save here and there some soldier whose uniform waked a brief flame of red and gold, or a hooded brother who glowed purple under a lighted pillar.Purposely we pushed against the people before us, so that in a space black as a lake of ink the trio we followed was separated. The rush of people from behind was so sudden—so well managed by us,—that it took the Duke unawares. The three were caught in the eddy, divided, and before they could come together again I had my arm through Monica's, and was dragging her away, the messenger clinging to me closely.“Don't be frightened,”I said.“It's I—Ramón. I have to speak with you.”She looked up at me, her pale face dim as a spirit's in the dark.“Shame!”she stammered brokenly.“To force me like this—you, who have—”“Done nothing except love you too well; and you must give me the chance to win you back. You owe it to me,”I said almost fiercely; and she was silenced.“Monica! where are you?”I heard Lady Vale-Avon's voice call, and could have thanked her for giving me the direction to avoid.“Take us to that empty chapel quickly,”I said to the man. Then he, who would have known how to find his way in that stone forest blindfold, steered us through the sea of people, and into a haven beyond the waves. Not a chapel was lighted; but as my eyes grew used to the gloom I could see faces on the other side of the tall, shut gates of openwork iron which we passed.“I have the key of this one. I will promise the people a better place if they'll come out,”whispered the messenger, stopping before a pair of these closed doors, and unlocking it with a great key.I heard him speciously informing a group of shadows that[pg 258]they would be too far from the music to hear it well. He had a friend who would open another chapel nearer. Eagerly ten or twenty persons snapped at the bait, flocked out, and the instant their backs were turned, I half dragged, half carried Monica in. Then before she could escape, if she had wished to try, the great iron gates were shut and locked upon us.“They will be looking everywhere for you,”I said.“Come with me to the back where it is so dark that no one can see us. This chapel must seem to be empty.”“I want to be found,”the girl answered cruelly.“I'm going to marry the Duke.”“If you love him and not me, I shan't lift my hand to keep you,”I said.“The other night I believed it was so, and made up my mind to trouble you no more. But Miss O'Donnel said—”“Miss O'Donnel!”exclaimed Monica.“I wonder you can speak of her to me.”Her voice quivered with angry scorn, yet my heart leaped with joy at the words which confirmed Pilar's suspicions and my hopes.“She's as loyally your friend as I am loyally your lover,”I assured her.“Now listen. There are things which you must hear; and if when you've heard them you ask me to take you to your mother and Carmona, I'll obey instantly.”Then, without giving her time to cut me short, I began to talk of the letter I had written at Manzanares, and how I sent it, and what it had said.“Did you get it?”I asked.“No such letter as that. It was a very different one—a horrible letter. Oh, Ramón! if it were true; ifyouhad been true! If you could have gone on loving me!”She broke into sobbing, and hid her face between her hands.“Don't dare to doubt that I did, and always will. Tell me what the letter said?”I pulled her hands down, too roughly perhaps, and held them fast in mine.She tried to check her sobs.“I could show you the letter if there were a light. Since that day I've carried it with me, so that[pg 259]I could look at it sometimes, and have strength to hate you if my heart failed.”“My own darling—mine again,”I soothed her.“It's been a horrible plot. If that letter was not full of love and longing for you, it was forged; no doubt after the handwriting of the one I really sent.”“You mean my mother—would do a thing like that?”“She might have justified it by telling herself that the end sanctified the means.”“I know—she was ready to do almost anything to turn me from you,”Monica admitted, leaning against me so confidingly that all I had suffered was forgotten.“I couldn't have believed this of her; but—she did tell me the night before Manzanares that at Toledo she heard you calling Pilar O'Donnel,‘darling.’‘Young Mr. O'Donnel seems very fond of his sister,’mother said, looking straight at me, though she seemed to speak innocently.‘I heard him call her“darling girl.”’You can imagine how I felt! But I hoped she was mistaken, or that she'd invented it to make me unhappy; so I wouldn't let myself beveryunhappy, only a little distressed. Because, you know, Miss O'Donnel is awfully pretty and perfectly fascinating. Mother said, the night we were at Manzanares, that she was one of those girls whom most men fall irresistibly in love with; and—and I loved you so much, I couldn't help being jealous.”“As if any man could evenseepoor little Pilar, when you were near!”I exclaimed, forgetting Dick's difference of opinion.“Oh, I had faith in you, then. But next morning that pretty Mariquita handed me a letter, which I was sure was from you, as she hid it behind a tin of hot water. I was taking it, when mother saw, and snatched it away. You can't imagine the things I said to her, to make her give it back. I was so furious, that for once in my life I wasn't in the least afraid, and I would have tried to rush past her and run out to you, when she'd refused to give the letter up, but I wasn't dressed. My room had no door of its own. I had to go through mother's room to get[pg 260]out; and before I knew what she was doing, she'd slammed the door between us, locking it on her side. I hadn't even a proper window, only a little barred, square thing, high up in the wall. I couldn't scream for help, even if I hadn't been ashamed to make a scene in a strange hotel; so what was I to do.“She kept me there, wild with rage against her, for quite an hour after I was dressed and ready to dart out when I had the chance; but at last she unlocked the door, looking very grave.‘I've opened your letter,’she said,‘and read it, as it was my duty and my right to do. It is different from what I expected, and I've decided after all that it's as well you should have it.’“Then she handed me a torn envelope, and I recognized it as the one we had crumpled up between us when she snatched it away. Your handwriting was on it, and I never doubted it was yours inside, though it looked as if you'd written in a hurry, with a bad pen. No name was signed; but the letter said you thought it best to tell me, without waiting longer, that you feared we'd both been hasty and made a mistake in our feelings. Our meeting was romantic, and we'd been carried away by our youth and hot blood. Now you'd had time to see that it would be unwise of me to give up a man like the Duke of Carmona for one unworthy enough to have fallen in love with another girl. Accordingly, you released me from all obligations, and took it for granted that you were also free. Then you bade me good-bye, wishing me a happy future in case your car and the Duke's happened to go on by different ways. Do you wonder I tried to hate you, and that I said‘yes’the very next night, when the Duke asked me again if I wouldn't change my mind and marry him?”For answer, I caught her against my breast, and we clung to each other as if we could never part.“Such a promise is no promise,”I said at last.“I have you, and I don't mean to let you go, lest I lose you for ever. Monica, will you trust yourself to me, and run away with me to-night?”“Yes,”she whispered.“I daren't go back to them. But what shall we do?”[pg 261]“I'll tell you what I've been thinking,”I said.“My car isn't far off. Colonel O'Donnel and Pilar, who'd do anything for you and me, are in the cathedral. Just outside this chapel the man who locked us in is waiting for my signal to open the door. With the O'Donnels and Dick Waring to see you through, will you motor with me to Cadiz, take ship for Gibraltar, and marry me on English soil?”“Suppose there should be no ship for days?”she hesitated.“There is one nearly every day; but at worst I can hire a boat of some sort.”“Once we were in Gibraltar, you'd be out of reach if the Duke tried to take revenge,”she said.“Yes, Iwillgo! I love you and I can't give you up again. Oh, Ramón, I never would have promised to marry him, if I hadn't longed to show you that—that I didn't care, and that there was someone who wanted me very much, if you didn't.”“How like a woman!”I exclaimed, laughing—for I could laugh now.“He has only kissed my hand,”she went on,“and I hated even that.”“Yet you're wearing his brooch,”a returning flash of jealousy made me say;“and a mantilla, to please him.”“The brooch is his mother's. So is the mantilla. She at least has been kind; so I let her put them both on for me to-day, when she asked.”“Kind? When there's time I'll tell you one or two things. But now there's no time for anything except to take you away.”“Listen! The Miserere has begun,”she said.“Has it been long? I heard it only now. Can we get out before it's over?”“Of course we can—though not quite as easily, perhaps, as if the crowd were moving with us. However, we can't afford to wait.”“What wonderful music!”Monica whispered.“I wish I dared to feel it were blessing us.”“Yes, feel it so,”I said, and involuntarily was silent to listen[pg 262]for an instant to the melodious flood which swept from aisle to aisle in golden billows. Out from the wave of organ music and men's voices, boyish soprano notes sprayed high, flinging their bright crystals up, up, until they fell, shattered, from the vaulted ceiling of stone.From each dimly seen column shot forth one of those slender-stemmed, flaming white lilies of light, such as had bloomed in Our Lady's garden, as thepasosmoved blossoming through the streets. It seemed as if they might have been gathered and replanted here, to lighten the darkness; and as the music soared and sank, its waves set the lily-flames flickering.I peered out, and saw my man hovering near. In the gloom he did not catch the signal I gave him with my hand, but when I shook a handkerchief between the gratings he came quickly. As he unlocked the doors I slid the promised bribe into his palm; and having glanced about to make sure as far as possible that we were not watched, I called Monica.“Take us out by the nearest way,”I said; and the man began to hurry us officiously through the crowd.Monica clung to me tightly, and I could feel the tremblings that ran through her body. My heart was pounding too; for it is when the ship is nearest home, after a stormy voyage, that the captain remembers he has nerves. It seemed too marvellous to be true, that the girl was mine at last, and yet—what could separate us, now that I held her close against my side, and she was ready to go with me, out of her world into mine?“This way, this way, señorito,”our guide warned me, plucking at my arm as I steered ahead, confused by a thousand moving shadows. I followed, brushing sharply against a tall man in conicalcapuchaand trailing robe of blue. He turned, his masked face close to mine, so close that even in the dusk I caught a flash of glittering eyes. Then, giving me a sudden push, he cried out,“Help—murder! An anarchist—a free-thinker! To the rescue!”It was Carmona's voice, and I knew instantly that he must[pg 263]have borrowed this dress from some friend in the cathedral—perhaps a member of thecofradìato which he himself belonged—so that he could search for me and Monica, without being seen by us.Thrusting the girl behind me, yet keeping her close, I hurled him away, but he sprang at me again, and this time something glittered in his right hand. I fought with him for it, and pulled a slim length of steel up through his closed fingers, so that the sharp dagger-blade must have cut him to the bone. He gave a cry, and relaxed his grasp; but though he was disabled for the instant a dozen men in the crowd, which swirled round us now, caught and held me fast. Monica was wrenched from me; the dagger had fallen to the ground (but not before I had seen it was of Toledo make); the figure in the bluecapuchawas swept out of my sight, and I was fighting like a madman in a strait-jacket for freedom.[pg 264]XXXIIOn the Road to CadizIt was a mouse who gnawed a hole in the net that entangled the lion.Now, I am no lion in importance, nor was Colonel O'Donnel's messenger of as little significance as a mouse; yet he was the last creature to whom I would have looked for succour in a moment of stress. Nevertheless to him I owed my rescue.“A mistake, a mistake,”he chirped, jumping about, bird-like, just outside the circle of struggling men.“I am a verger here; this gentleman was with me. He did nothing. He is a most respectable and twice wealthy person, a tourist whom I guide. He is innocent—no anarchist, no free-thinker. That other—that pretended brother—has made a practical joke. See, he has run away to escape consequences. There is nothing against this noble señor; you have it on the word of a verger.”Because it was bewilderingly dark, and they might have got the wrong man; because, too, the verger was probably right, and it had been a joke played upon them by a person who had now disappeared, the twelve or fifteen men who surrounded me fell back shamefacedly, glad on second thoughts to melt away before they could be identified and reproached for disturbing the public peace, and spoiling the music to which their King listened.I was free, but I would not leave the cathedral yet, for my hope was to find Monica again. I wandered in every direction, while the verger went off to bring Dick and the O'Donnels to meet me in the Orange Court.[pg 265]Pilar's delight in the first part of my story was dashed by the sequel. Of course, she said, it must come right in the end, since Monica and I understood each other at last. But just for the moment everything seemed difficult. The Duke was sure now that I was Casa Triana, and not Cristóbal O'Donnel. He would almost certainly make all the trouble he could, and a man of his influence could make a good deal. As his attempt to stick a dagger into me—by way of a quick solution—had been covered by thecapuchaof acofradìa, I could not take revenge by laying a counter accusation. I might say I had recognized his voice, and that I thought I had recognized the dagger bought in Toledo; but I could prove nothing, and the Duke would score.Still, as the Cherub remarked consolingly, he could not do much worse than force me out of Spain. Neither I, nor anyone else, had ever said in so many words that I was Cristóbal O'Donnel. If people had taken my identity for granted because of a few round-about hints, and because for a joke I had borrowed a friend's uniform for a day or two, nothing very serious could be made out of that after all; and as Cristóbal really was on leave, he need not be involved. He was a good officer, whose services were valued, and I was not to worry lest harm should come upon him. I need think only of Monica and of myself. Had I formed any idea of what to do next?“I must get Monica out of Carmona's house,”I said.“You'll have to lie in wait and snatch her from under their noses next time they show them,”suggested Dick;“unless—”“Unless?”“Carmona keeps his indoors until he's arranged to have yours politely deported.”“I can't be got rid of in an hour.”“You could to-morrow.”“I'm afraid you can,”sighed the Cherub,“and that, though I shall do my best, I may be powerless to help you.”“What if it were known that he saved the King yesterday?”Pilar asked her father.[pg 266]“The King is going away to-morrow. You know, he's off to England in a few days. Besides, the incident to-day will be hushed up. The King will know, of course, and a few others; but it will be kept out of the papers,—anyhow, until they've got their hands on both the men concerned.”“I've still got to-night,”I said,“and it's not eleven yet. I hoped that in the confusion Monica had given her mother and Carmona the slip, and that if I waited here I might find her again. I thought she might try to get back to the chapel where we had our talk, trusting that I'd look for her there. But she didn't come, and I searched everywhere in vain before I tried watching the crowd pass through the Court of Oranges. Now, I'm certain that Carmona or Lady Vale-Avon must have pounced upon her while I was surrounded, and forced her away. No doubt they're at home long ago. Why shouldn't I appeal to the English consul, and say that the Duke of Carmona's detaining an English girl in his house against her will?”“No use,”said the Cherub.“She's under age, and she's with her mother, who's visiting the Duchess.”“Then I'll go to Carmona's door and make such a row that they'll be obliged to let me in.”“You'd get into a police cell instead. A man's house is his castle, especially when it's a palace and he's a Duke.”I was silenced. I knew the Cherub was right; but it seemed monstrous that in this twentieth century such tyranny should divide a girl from her lover.When I had thought for a moment I said,“Anyhow, I shall go to the house and try to bribe a servant. Once in, I'd not come out without Monica. I've done two satisfactory things to-day by bribery and corruption, and I don't see why I shouldn't bring it off the third time.”“The Duke's servants have been in the employ of the family for years, and their fathers and grandfathers before them. No money would bribe them to deceive their master and mistress,”said the Cherub.[pg 267]“I shouldn't have thought either the Duke or his mother capable of inspiring such devotion.”“It isn't devotion—it's fear. To an unfaithful servant in that house—well, almost anything might happen.”“Have you any advice to give me, then?”I asked, in despair.The Cherub shook his head.“The prudent thing would be to go away to-night, and trust Lady Monica's loyalty. She can't be forced into marrying the Duke, you know; and if she breaks the engagement he'll have to let her alone, for dignity's sake.”“That might be prudent; but of course I won't do it.”“Of course you won't,”returned the Cherub, as if it went without saying.“Very well, then; matters are desperate, and desperate remedies must be tried; things can't be worse than they are. I shall hang about Carmona's house early in the morning, and when the first person comes out I'll go in. If I don't come out, you will know what's become of me; and I don't suppose in these days even a Duke can kill a man without getting into trouble?”“He would merely have you arrested as a housebreaker,”said the Cherub.“Well, I should have seen Monica first, and perhaps have got her on the right side of the door.”“We'll have a go at the business together,”said Dick.“It would be more sociable.”“All right, thank you,”said I.“Then something's settled; and these best of friends can go home and sleep.”“Sleep!”echoed Pilar scornfully.“Oh, if I were a man, and could dosomethingto punish the Duke!”“I wish you could set your bull at him,”said Dick.“Only, now I think of it, it'shisbull still.”Try as we might, it was impossible to persuade either Colonel O'Donnel or Pilar that they ought to return quietly to bed, if not to sleep. No, they would do nothing of the kind. Besides, no properly disposed person within ten miles of Seville would lie in bed that night. Processions would go on till early morning. Many[pg 268]people would watch them, or spend the hours till early mass in prayer in the cathedral, which would be open all night. Why should not the O'Donnel family do as others did?There was no answer to this; and it was finally arranged that, if they wished to rest at all, it should be at the hotel in the Plaza de San Fernando, where we had dined. That was to be the rendezvous; and the Cherub would engage the verger we knew to watch the Duke's house in the morning, bringing news of our fate to the hotel—if we did not bring it ourselves.Never—if I live beyond the allotted threescore years and ten—shall I forget that strange night of Holy Thursday in Seville.Dick and I wandered through the streets, and in the Plaza de la Constitución, where electric lamps and moonlight mingled bleakly, while never-endingcofradìaspassed.A sky of violet was like a veil of silky gauze, and as the moon slid down the steeps of heaven the vast dome paled. One by one the stars went out like spent matches; dawn was on its way. Electric lights flared and died, leaving a pearly dusk more mysterious than any twilight which falls with night.The crowds had thinned; but silent brotherhoods moved through streets where there was no other sound than the rustling of their feet, the tap of their leaders' silver batons. So faint was the dawn-dusk, that they were droves of shadows on their way back into night, their candle-lights lost stars. Now and then the clink of a baton brought to some half-shuttered window a face, to be presently joined by other faces, peering down at the dark processions of men and black-robed, penitent women.Outside the great east door of the cathedral halted apaso, like a huge golden car. Christ was nailed to a cross not yet lifted into place. A Roman soldier, of exaggerated height and sardonic features, stood reading the parchment with the mocking inscription about to be nailed above the thorn-crowned head. His evil mouth was curled in a satirical smile. Two centurions in armour sat their impatient horses, and gave directions for raising the cross. The effect was startling; for in this pale beginning of light,[pg 269]and the atmosphere of tingling exaltation which steeped the town, it was difficult not to believe that the terrible carved figures of wood had life, and that with the eyes of one's flesh one beheld the world's great tragedy.Somehow the impression of horror was but deepened by the fact that the bearers had come out from under the curtains of thepaso, to take off the large pads they wore on their heads, to drink water, and smoke cigarettes with the penitents who had rolled up the masks from their pale, damp faces. They might have been comrades of the Roman soldiers, in their obliviousness of that tortured form on the cross.It was not yet five o'clock when Dick and I plunged into the cool gloom of the cathedral, passing the spot where Carmona had struck at me, and the chapel where I had taken Monica. The stones were slippery as the floor of a ballroom, with wax dropped from innumerable candles, and the air was heavy with the smoke of stale incense.The searchlight of dawn could scarcely penetrate the black curtains which throughout Holy Week had draped the cathedral; therefore a solitary beam, like a bar of gold, slanted in through one superb window.The amethysts, emeralds, and rubies of incomparable painted glass transformed the yellow bar into a rainbow which streamed down the length of the majestic aisle and struck full upon a golden altar. Then slowly the jewelled band moved from the gold carvings, the flames dying as it passed. Travelling, still like a searchlight, it found the prostrate forms of sleeping men exhausted by their vigils, snatched out of veiling darkness kneeling women clad in black, and at last rested on the Holy Week monument itself, paled its myriad candles, and made pools of liquid gold on the vestments of priests who had knelt all night in adoration of the Host.“Say,”said Dick, half whispering,“I don't gush as a rule; but doesn't it look like the light of salvation coming to save lost souls?”Not a hotel in Seville had shut its doors that night of Holy[pg 270]Thursday; not aconcièrgehad done more than nod and wake out of a broken dream, for there had been an excited coming and going through all the dark hours.At six o'clock Dick and I were at thefonda, inquiring for Colonel O'Donnel and his daughter. They had come in at two, and were now asleep, it seemed; but had left a note for the señores. In this note we were assured that the friendly verger of last night's adventure would be lurking in the neighbourhood of Carmona's house as early as six o'clock, and should we want him we would know where he was to be found.We took bedrooms, bathed, dressed again, and after hot coffee and rolls decided that is was time to go on guard. To be sure, it was absurdly early; but by this time the Duke's household might be astir, and we must not risk letting Monica be carried away before we had had a chance to practise the gentle art of housebreaking.The clocks of Seville were spasmodically telling the hour of seven when we entered the narrow and dusky lane of the Calle de las Dueñas. So fast asleep were the shuttered windows that our mission seemed a fool's errand; but as we came in sight of the Duke's closed door the Cherub's messenger loomed out of the shadows.Unshaven and haggard, his eyes glittered like black beads in the daylight; and he greeted us excitedly.“Señores,”he began,“I was going to look for you at the hotel. A thing has happened. The Señor Colonel told me I must watch the house of His Grace the Duke, and let you know when you came if anyone had been out or in. Who would think of people starting upon a journey before the day is awake? But so it is. The Duke, whom I have seen in other years, has gone away in an automobile with his honourable mother and two other ladies.”“You are sure it was he?”I asked, completely taken aback.“Sure, my señorito. The car was a large grey car. And”—his face grew sly as a squirrel's—“I can tell you where it is going, if you would like to know.”[pg 271]“I want to know all you can tell,”I said.“Well, the grey car arrived a little before half-past six, I should think. In it there was only the young man who drives, dressed in leather.‘What is going to happen?’I asked myself. It seemed better to wait and see than run to the hotel to say,‘there's an automobile at the door for the Duke,’and perhaps find it gone, no one could tell where, when I got back. But I do not sleep on my feet. There are always ideas running in my head. I pretended to be strolling past, and stopping for a look at such a fine machine. Perhaps I had matches in my pocket, perhaps not; in any case I asked the young man in leather to give me a light for my cigarette. He did, and it was a natural thing to fall into talk.‘You make an early start,’I said. He nodded.‘Going far?’‘To Cadiz to-day, by Jerez.’That is all, honoured señores; but I tell it for what it is worth. A few minutes later the grand people came out, and the automobile shot away.”“Did they put on luggage?”I asked.“All the automobile would hold.”“By Jove!”exclaimed Dick.“Carmona's thrown sand in our eyes this time. Who'd have supposed he'd turn tail and run away like a coward in the midst of the Holy Week show, with the King still in town?”“I was a fool not to expect the unexpected,”I said.“If anyone except Colonel O'Donnel's man had told me I should have been between two minds whether to accept the story or not. But O'Donnel called him a trusty fellow; and he served me well last night. If we wait to verify his story, by the time we find out it's true the grey car will have got too long a start. I don't like Carmona's stealing off. It looks as if there were something up.”“He showed last night that he was desperate,”said Dick.“I guess we'd better get on the road before much grass grows.”“You're the best of friends,”said I. And paying the verger well for his services, we hurried back to the hotel to find Ropes and have the car got ready.It was still very early, and the Cherub and Pilar had not had[pg 272]many hours beauty sleep; but we could not leave for an indefinite absence without bidding them good-bye; and we were on our way to knock at Colonel O'Donnel's door when Pilar appeared from the room adjoining.A moment, and she understood everything.“You'll follow!”she exclaimed, without waiting to hear my plans.“And I'll go with him,”said Dick, looking wistfully at her; for he had not had his answer yet, and who could tell when he would have it now, or what it would be when it came?“Of course. I knew you would,”Pilar replied. And a light leaped up in her dark eyes. If it meant nothing warmer, it meant approval.“You'll want to go at once. Oh, Iamsorry you'll miss the fair. You don't know what a fairyland Seville is, with miles of streets and park roofed in with arches of coloured lights, like jewels; and papa has a tent in the gayest place, where we stay all day, and see our friends, and it's such fun visiting the booths and side-shows! But maybe next spring you'll come back for theferiawith your bride, Don Ramón; and as for you, Señor Waring—”“As for me?”repeated Dick, anxiously.“Am I not to come back before that?”“You're to come back when you like, and—papa will be glad to see you,”she answered, just as any conventional little señorita might have answered. But at least she had the kindness to blush; and I would have moved away to give Dick a last chance if at that moment the Cherub had not come out of his room.Instantly Pilar dashed into explanations, and between the three of us he soon had the history of events.No one on earth looks less practical than the dreamy-eyed, soft-voiced Cherub; yet it was he who thought of practical details which we had forgotten. He it was who reminded us that it would not be prudent to take Ropes away from Seville. As the man who said he had discovered the bomb, his evidence would be wanted, and if he disappeared it would look mysterious. His real connection with theMarquésof Casa Triana might be unearthed by the police; and because of that miserable affair at[pg 273]Barcelona, whose consequences were continually cropping up, some hideous story might be concocted and believed.Dick and I unhesitatingly decided to take the Cherub's advice, and leave Ropes behind. He was engaged in getting the car ready, and would no doubt be disappointed to hear that he was to be temporarily abandoned; but he would see the wisdom of such a course, and might be trusted to guard my interests. As for Dick, he might turn his back on the proceedings in Seville without danger, for he posed only as the employer of a man who had found the bomb; besides, as I suggested without glancing at Pilar, he could come back in a few days in case he were wanted to give evidence.Thus it was settled; at eight o'clock we had said good-bye to Pilarcita and the Cherub, softening the farewell with a hopeful“au revoir”; and with Ropes staring disconsolately after us, we flashed out of the Plaza de San Fernando.I drove, with Dick beside me, for there was no longer need for subterfuge. Carmona knew me for what I was, and I could help Monica more by defying him than by playing the old waiting game, of which I was tired.It seemed strange to be racing across country again in the car, after those fevered days in Seville. With the steering-wheel in my hand, the steady thrum of the motor seemed to say,“You'll do it; you'll do it;—I'll help you to do it.”The air was made of perfume—orange blossoms and acacias; and the vast flowery plain where Seville is queen gave us a tolerable road, on which the car ran lightly. Soaring snow peaks of fantastic shapes walled the green arena of rolling meadows, and the day was like a day of June.Save for the grey Lecomte, scarcely a motor had we seen since leaving Biarritz, except in Madrid; but now, when I tried to decipher the road hieroglyphics, the dust showed more than one track of pneus. Cars had come to Seville from Madrid forSemana Santa, and had evidently run out this way for a spin more than once. As I had not Ropes' detective talent I was unable to distinguish the Lecomte's tyre-marks from others.[pg 274]In sight of the conspicuous church tower at Utrera—ancient home of outlaws—we came upon a dusty white line diverging to Ecija. Pausing to question a road-mender, I remembered Colonel O'Donnel's story of the Seven Men of Ecija, and the curious bond between them and the Dukes of Carmona. But what brought the tale to my mind—unless it was the name of Ecija on the road-map and signpost, or the fact that we were now in the real heart of brigand-land—I could not have told.Yes, said the road-mender, he had seen an automobile go by—a big one, not long ago, steering as if for Jerez. Was it grey? He would not be sure, but at all events the thing was so grey with dust that had there been another colour underneath, no one could have seen it. Ladies in the car? Well, he was not positive, for it had gone by like a cannon-ball in a cloud of smoke; but there were several persons inside, and it was the only motor which had passed him to-day. Several cars had appeared in the distance yesterday, but they had turned back on the Seville side of Utrera.One automobile, a big one, apparently grey, and with several persons inside, had gone by at a tremendous pace not long before. That sounded as if the car we chased could not be far away. Our eyes searched the tell-tale dust, and found the sleek, straight trail of a pneu in the midst of wobbling cart tracks. We had but to follow that straight trail, then, I said, to come up with Carmona and interfere with his new plans.Now we were racing through a wide region of salt marsh, where within enclosures grazed hundreds of fierce black bulls, sooner or later to die in the arena. The country became desolate, and curiously sad. We met no more peasants' carts or laden donkeys as the road began to undulate among the foothills of distant mountain ranges.“What an ideal place for a band of Colonel O'Donnel'sbandidos, eh?”said Dick; then drew in his breath with a sharpness that cut the sentence short, as we whirled round a hummock at a turning of the road.

[pg 255]XXXIBehind an Iron Grating“Say,”remarked Dick in a stage whisper,“there'd be a big drop in the bee industry if all the world turned Protestant and bought no more great wax candles.”We were standing inside the Moorish arch of the Puerta del Perdon, in the Court of Oranges. Beyond, where the stuffed crocodile swung in a light breeze, was the entrance to the cathedral, black as the mouth of a cave. The wind which rocked that huge reptile—the gift of a disappointed Sultan—sent the petals of ten thousand orange blossoms drifting over our heads in a perfumed snow-storm. Past us trooped a dark-robed brotherhood, each man with his tall candle raining wax on the grass-grown stones of the old court.This it was which had drawn forth Dick's reflection; but I scarcely heard his words. I was watching for Monica; and my last chance must come soon if it were to come at all.Pilar and her father were not with us. They had gone into the cathedral, where they had secured seats not far from the royal chapel, and in the best position to hear the Miserere. Though it was early still, not quite nine o'clock, vast crowds were gathering and it was possible, they thought, that Carmona and his guests were already in their places. If they were seen there, Colonel O'Donnel would send out a messenger (a man employed in the cathedral) with a word for me.Earlier, this person had come to the hotel, where he had been told to look well at me that he might not fail to recognize me again. And Dick and I had not stood on sentinel duty for fifteen[pg 256]minutes when he appeared, beating through the opposing tide of the multitude as it swept towards the cathedral.“His worship the Colonel O'Donnel, wished their worships the two señoritos, to know that those they wished to find were not visible in the cathedral.”“Could they be there, and invisible?”I asked.“The cathedral is very dimly lighted; and they might not be seen if they were in some chapel. There are several with many people in them, and the doors are locked.”“Is that allowed?”“The people have given something to a verger not to let others in. I have power of the same kind, if any señor wished me to use it.”“Here they come!”whispered Dick.“Carmona, Lady Vale-Avon, and Lady Monica.”We stepped farther back into shadow, though such precaution was hardly needed. It was so dim in the Court of Oranges that the crowd groped its way over the cracked, uneven pavement. Only because they were close upon us, and he was watching, had Dick been able to make out the faces we knew.“Stop with us,”I said to Colonel O'Donnel's messenger.“You shall have a hundred pesetas if you will open the door of an empty chapel for me, and lock it again when I give the word.”“But I fear there are no empty ones—”he began.“Then make one empty. Can you do that—for a hundred pesetas?”“Yes, señor, I think I can.”By this time Monica, still in her black mantilla, had flitted past us between her mother and the Duke, but we were following. Dim as it was in the court, the moon looked out from behind the Giralda tower, and it was not dark enough for my project. Inside the cathedral, however (save where blazed the Holy Week monument, an illuminated temple of white and gold), was a mysterious darkness. Not the hundreds of great wax candles sufficed to light the aisles in that vast forest of stone.[pg 257]Stumbling, groping to pass through a hanging veil of shadow, thousands of men and women drifted aimlessly to and fro, themselves black as the shadows they fought, save here and there some soldier whose uniform waked a brief flame of red and gold, or a hooded brother who glowed purple under a lighted pillar.Purposely we pushed against the people before us, so that in a space black as a lake of ink the trio we followed was separated. The rush of people from behind was so sudden—so well managed by us,—that it took the Duke unawares. The three were caught in the eddy, divided, and before they could come together again I had my arm through Monica's, and was dragging her away, the messenger clinging to me closely.“Don't be frightened,”I said.“It's I—Ramón. I have to speak with you.”She looked up at me, her pale face dim as a spirit's in the dark.“Shame!”she stammered brokenly.“To force me like this—you, who have—”“Done nothing except love you too well; and you must give me the chance to win you back. You owe it to me,”I said almost fiercely; and she was silenced.“Monica! where are you?”I heard Lady Vale-Avon's voice call, and could have thanked her for giving me the direction to avoid.“Take us to that empty chapel quickly,”I said to the man. Then he, who would have known how to find his way in that stone forest blindfold, steered us through the sea of people, and into a haven beyond the waves. Not a chapel was lighted; but as my eyes grew used to the gloom I could see faces on the other side of the tall, shut gates of openwork iron which we passed.“I have the key of this one. I will promise the people a better place if they'll come out,”whispered the messenger, stopping before a pair of these closed doors, and unlocking it with a great key.I heard him speciously informing a group of shadows that[pg 258]they would be too far from the music to hear it well. He had a friend who would open another chapel nearer. Eagerly ten or twenty persons snapped at the bait, flocked out, and the instant their backs were turned, I half dragged, half carried Monica in. Then before she could escape, if she had wished to try, the great iron gates were shut and locked upon us.“They will be looking everywhere for you,”I said.“Come with me to the back where it is so dark that no one can see us. This chapel must seem to be empty.”“I want to be found,”the girl answered cruelly.“I'm going to marry the Duke.”“If you love him and not me, I shan't lift my hand to keep you,”I said.“The other night I believed it was so, and made up my mind to trouble you no more. But Miss O'Donnel said—”“Miss O'Donnel!”exclaimed Monica.“I wonder you can speak of her to me.”Her voice quivered with angry scorn, yet my heart leaped with joy at the words which confirmed Pilar's suspicions and my hopes.“She's as loyally your friend as I am loyally your lover,”I assured her.“Now listen. There are things which you must hear; and if when you've heard them you ask me to take you to your mother and Carmona, I'll obey instantly.”Then, without giving her time to cut me short, I began to talk of the letter I had written at Manzanares, and how I sent it, and what it had said.“Did you get it?”I asked.“No such letter as that. It was a very different one—a horrible letter. Oh, Ramón! if it were true; ifyouhad been true! If you could have gone on loving me!”She broke into sobbing, and hid her face between her hands.“Don't dare to doubt that I did, and always will. Tell me what the letter said?”I pulled her hands down, too roughly perhaps, and held them fast in mine.She tried to check her sobs.“I could show you the letter if there were a light. Since that day I've carried it with me, so that[pg 259]I could look at it sometimes, and have strength to hate you if my heart failed.”“My own darling—mine again,”I soothed her.“It's been a horrible plot. If that letter was not full of love and longing for you, it was forged; no doubt after the handwriting of the one I really sent.”“You mean my mother—would do a thing like that?”“She might have justified it by telling herself that the end sanctified the means.”“I know—she was ready to do almost anything to turn me from you,”Monica admitted, leaning against me so confidingly that all I had suffered was forgotten.“I couldn't have believed this of her; but—she did tell me the night before Manzanares that at Toledo she heard you calling Pilar O'Donnel,‘darling.’‘Young Mr. O'Donnel seems very fond of his sister,’mother said, looking straight at me, though she seemed to speak innocently.‘I heard him call her“darling girl.”’You can imagine how I felt! But I hoped she was mistaken, or that she'd invented it to make me unhappy; so I wouldn't let myself beveryunhappy, only a little distressed. Because, you know, Miss O'Donnel is awfully pretty and perfectly fascinating. Mother said, the night we were at Manzanares, that she was one of those girls whom most men fall irresistibly in love with; and—and I loved you so much, I couldn't help being jealous.”“As if any man could evenseepoor little Pilar, when you were near!”I exclaimed, forgetting Dick's difference of opinion.“Oh, I had faith in you, then. But next morning that pretty Mariquita handed me a letter, which I was sure was from you, as she hid it behind a tin of hot water. I was taking it, when mother saw, and snatched it away. You can't imagine the things I said to her, to make her give it back. I was so furious, that for once in my life I wasn't in the least afraid, and I would have tried to rush past her and run out to you, when she'd refused to give the letter up, but I wasn't dressed. My room had no door of its own. I had to go through mother's room to get[pg 260]out; and before I knew what she was doing, she'd slammed the door between us, locking it on her side. I hadn't even a proper window, only a little barred, square thing, high up in the wall. I couldn't scream for help, even if I hadn't been ashamed to make a scene in a strange hotel; so what was I to do.“She kept me there, wild with rage against her, for quite an hour after I was dressed and ready to dart out when I had the chance; but at last she unlocked the door, looking very grave.‘I've opened your letter,’she said,‘and read it, as it was my duty and my right to do. It is different from what I expected, and I've decided after all that it's as well you should have it.’“Then she handed me a torn envelope, and I recognized it as the one we had crumpled up between us when she snatched it away. Your handwriting was on it, and I never doubted it was yours inside, though it looked as if you'd written in a hurry, with a bad pen. No name was signed; but the letter said you thought it best to tell me, without waiting longer, that you feared we'd both been hasty and made a mistake in our feelings. Our meeting was romantic, and we'd been carried away by our youth and hot blood. Now you'd had time to see that it would be unwise of me to give up a man like the Duke of Carmona for one unworthy enough to have fallen in love with another girl. Accordingly, you released me from all obligations, and took it for granted that you were also free. Then you bade me good-bye, wishing me a happy future in case your car and the Duke's happened to go on by different ways. Do you wonder I tried to hate you, and that I said‘yes’the very next night, when the Duke asked me again if I wouldn't change my mind and marry him?”For answer, I caught her against my breast, and we clung to each other as if we could never part.“Such a promise is no promise,”I said at last.“I have you, and I don't mean to let you go, lest I lose you for ever. Monica, will you trust yourself to me, and run away with me to-night?”“Yes,”she whispered.“I daren't go back to them. But what shall we do?”[pg 261]“I'll tell you what I've been thinking,”I said.“My car isn't far off. Colonel O'Donnel and Pilar, who'd do anything for you and me, are in the cathedral. Just outside this chapel the man who locked us in is waiting for my signal to open the door. With the O'Donnels and Dick Waring to see you through, will you motor with me to Cadiz, take ship for Gibraltar, and marry me on English soil?”“Suppose there should be no ship for days?”she hesitated.“There is one nearly every day; but at worst I can hire a boat of some sort.”“Once we were in Gibraltar, you'd be out of reach if the Duke tried to take revenge,”she said.“Yes, Iwillgo! I love you and I can't give you up again. Oh, Ramón, I never would have promised to marry him, if I hadn't longed to show you that—that I didn't care, and that there was someone who wanted me very much, if you didn't.”“How like a woman!”I exclaimed, laughing—for I could laugh now.“He has only kissed my hand,”she went on,“and I hated even that.”“Yet you're wearing his brooch,”a returning flash of jealousy made me say;“and a mantilla, to please him.”“The brooch is his mother's. So is the mantilla. She at least has been kind; so I let her put them both on for me to-day, when she asked.”“Kind? When there's time I'll tell you one or two things. But now there's no time for anything except to take you away.”“Listen! The Miserere has begun,”she said.“Has it been long? I heard it only now. Can we get out before it's over?”“Of course we can—though not quite as easily, perhaps, as if the crowd were moving with us. However, we can't afford to wait.”“What wonderful music!”Monica whispered.“I wish I dared to feel it were blessing us.”“Yes, feel it so,”I said, and involuntarily was silent to listen[pg 262]for an instant to the melodious flood which swept from aisle to aisle in golden billows. Out from the wave of organ music and men's voices, boyish soprano notes sprayed high, flinging their bright crystals up, up, until they fell, shattered, from the vaulted ceiling of stone.From each dimly seen column shot forth one of those slender-stemmed, flaming white lilies of light, such as had bloomed in Our Lady's garden, as thepasosmoved blossoming through the streets. It seemed as if they might have been gathered and replanted here, to lighten the darkness; and as the music soared and sank, its waves set the lily-flames flickering.I peered out, and saw my man hovering near. In the gloom he did not catch the signal I gave him with my hand, but when I shook a handkerchief between the gratings he came quickly. As he unlocked the doors I slid the promised bribe into his palm; and having glanced about to make sure as far as possible that we were not watched, I called Monica.“Take us out by the nearest way,”I said; and the man began to hurry us officiously through the crowd.Monica clung to me tightly, and I could feel the tremblings that ran through her body. My heart was pounding too; for it is when the ship is nearest home, after a stormy voyage, that the captain remembers he has nerves. It seemed too marvellous to be true, that the girl was mine at last, and yet—what could separate us, now that I held her close against my side, and she was ready to go with me, out of her world into mine?“This way, this way, señorito,”our guide warned me, plucking at my arm as I steered ahead, confused by a thousand moving shadows. I followed, brushing sharply against a tall man in conicalcapuchaand trailing robe of blue. He turned, his masked face close to mine, so close that even in the dusk I caught a flash of glittering eyes. Then, giving me a sudden push, he cried out,“Help—murder! An anarchist—a free-thinker! To the rescue!”It was Carmona's voice, and I knew instantly that he must[pg 263]have borrowed this dress from some friend in the cathedral—perhaps a member of thecofradìato which he himself belonged—so that he could search for me and Monica, without being seen by us.Thrusting the girl behind me, yet keeping her close, I hurled him away, but he sprang at me again, and this time something glittered in his right hand. I fought with him for it, and pulled a slim length of steel up through his closed fingers, so that the sharp dagger-blade must have cut him to the bone. He gave a cry, and relaxed his grasp; but though he was disabled for the instant a dozen men in the crowd, which swirled round us now, caught and held me fast. Monica was wrenched from me; the dagger had fallen to the ground (but not before I had seen it was of Toledo make); the figure in the bluecapuchawas swept out of my sight, and I was fighting like a madman in a strait-jacket for freedom.

“Say,”remarked Dick in a stage whisper,“there'd be a big drop in the bee industry if all the world turned Protestant and bought no more great wax candles.”

We were standing inside the Moorish arch of the Puerta del Perdon, in the Court of Oranges. Beyond, where the stuffed crocodile swung in a light breeze, was the entrance to the cathedral, black as the mouth of a cave. The wind which rocked that huge reptile—the gift of a disappointed Sultan—sent the petals of ten thousand orange blossoms drifting over our heads in a perfumed snow-storm. Past us trooped a dark-robed brotherhood, each man with his tall candle raining wax on the grass-grown stones of the old court.

This it was which had drawn forth Dick's reflection; but I scarcely heard his words. I was watching for Monica; and my last chance must come soon if it were to come at all.

Pilar and her father were not with us. They had gone into the cathedral, where they had secured seats not far from the royal chapel, and in the best position to hear the Miserere. Though it was early still, not quite nine o'clock, vast crowds were gathering and it was possible, they thought, that Carmona and his guests were already in their places. If they were seen there, Colonel O'Donnel would send out a messenger (a man employed in the cathedral) with a word for me.

Earlier, this person had come to the hotel, where he had been told to look well at me that he might not fail to recognize me again. And Dick and I had not stood on sentinel duty for fifteen[pg 256]minutes when he appeared, beating through the opposing tide of the multitude as it swept towards the cathedral.

“His worship the Colonel O'Donnel, wished their worships the two señoritos, to know that those they wished to find were not visible in the cathedral.”

“Could they be there, and invisible?”I asked.

“The cathedral is very dimly lighted; and they might not be seen if they were in some chapel. There are several with many people in them, and the doors are locked.”

“Is that allowed?”

“The people have given something to a verger not to let others in. I have power of the same kind, if any señor wished me to use it.”

“Here they come!”whispered Dick.“Carmona, Lady Vale-Avon, and Lady Monica.”

We stepped farther back into shadow, though such precaution was hardly needed. It was so dim in the Court of Oranges that the crowd groped its way over the cracked, uneven pavement. Only because they were close upon us, and he was watching, had Dick been able to make out the faces we knew.

“Stop with us,”I said to Colonel O'Donnel's messenger.“You shall have a hundred pesetas if you will open the door of an empty chapel for me, and lock it again when I give the word.”

“But I fear there are no empty ones—”he began.

“Then make one empty. Can you do that—for a hundred pesetas?”

“Yes, señor, I think I can.”

By this time Monica, still in her black mantilla, had flitted past us between her mother and the Duke, but we were following. Dim as it was in the court, the moon looked out from behind the Giralda tower, and it was not dark enough for my project. Inside the cathedral, however (save where blazed the Holy Week monument, an illuminated temple of white and gold), was a mysterious darkness. Not the hundreds of great wax candles sufficed to light the aisles in that vast forest of stone.[pg 257]Stumbling, groping to pass through a hanging veil of shadow, thousands of men and women drifted aimlessly to and fro, themselves black as the shadows they fought, save here and there some soldier whose uniform waked a brief flame of red and gold, or a hooded brother who glowed purple under a lighted pillar.

Purposely we pushed against the people before us, so that in a space black as a lake of ink the trio we followed was separated. The rush of people from behind was so sudden—so well managed by us,—that it took the Duke unawares. The three were caught in the eddy, divided, and before they could come together again I had my arm through Monica's, and was dragging her away, the messenger clinging to me closely.

“Don't be frightened,”I said.“It's I—Ramón. I have to speak with you.”

She looked up at me, her pale face dim as a spirit's in the dark.

“Shame!”she stammered brokenly.“To force me like this—you, who have—”

“Done nothing except love you too well; and you must give me the chance to win you back. You owe it to me,”I said almost fiercely; and she was silenced.

“Monica! where are you?”I heard Lady Vale-Avon's voice call, and could have thanked her for giving me the direction to avoid.

“Take us to that empty chapel quickly,”I said to the man. Then he, who would have known how to find his way in that stone forest blindfold, steered us through the sea of people, and into a haven beyond the waves. Not a chapel was lighted; but as my eyes grew used to the gloom I could see faces on the other side of the tall, shut gates of openwork iron which we passed.

“I have the key of this one. I will promise the people a better place if they'll come out,”whispered the messenger, stopping before a pair of these closed doors, and unlocking it with a great key.

I heard him speciously informing a group of shadows that[pg 258]they would be too far from the music to hear it well. He had a friend who would open another chapel nearer. Eagerly ten or twenty persons snapped at the bait, flocked out, and the instant their backs were turned, I half dragged, half carried Monica in. Then before she could escape, if she had wished to try, the great iron gates were shut and locked upon us.

“They will be looking everywhere for you,”I said.“Come with me to the back where it is so dark that no one can see us. This chapel must seem to be empty.”

“I want to be found,”the girl answered cruelly.“I'm going to marry the Duke.”

“If you love him and not me, I shan't lift my hand to keep you,”I said.“The other night I believed it was so, and made up my mind to trouble you no more. But Miss O'Donnel said—”

“Miss O'Donnel!”exclaimed Monica.“I wonder you can speak of her to me.”

Her voice quivered with angry scorn, yet my heart leaped with joy at the words which confirmed Pilar's suspicions and my hopes.

“She's as loyally your friend as I am loyally your lover,”I assured her.“Now listen. There are things which you must hear; and if when you've heard them you ask me to take you to your mother and Carmona, I'll obey instantly.”Then, without giving her time to cut me short, I began to talk of the letter I had written at Manzanares, and how I sent it, and what it had said.“Did you get it?”I asked.

“No such letter as that. It was a very different one—a horrible letter. Oh, Ramón! if it were true; ifyouhad been true! If you could have gone on loving me!”She broke into sobbing, and hid her face between her hands.

“Don't dare to doubt that I did, and always will. Tell me what the letter said?”I pulled her hands down, too roughly perhaps, and held them fast in mine.

She tried to check her sobs.“I could show you the letter if there were a light. Since that day I've carried it with me, so that[pg 259]I could look at it sometimes, and have strength to hate you if my heart failed.”

“My own darling—mine again,”I soothed her.“It's been a horrible plot. If that letter was not full of love and longing for you, it was forged; no doubt after the handwriting of the one I really sent.”

“You mean my mother—would do a thing like that?”

“She might have justified it by telling herself that the end sanctified the means.”

“I know—she was ready to do almost anything to turn me from you,”Monica admitted, leaning against me so confidingly that all I had suffered was forgotten.“I couldn't have believed this of her; but—she did tell me the night before Manzanares that at Toledo she heard you calling Pilar O'Donnel,‘darling.’‘Young Mr. O'Donnel seems very fond of his sister,’mother said, looking straight at me, though she seemed to speak innocently.‘I heard him call her“darling girl.”’You can imagine how I felt! But I hoped she was mistaken, or that she'd invented it to make me unhappy; so I wouldn't let myself beveryunhappy, only a little distressed. Because, you know, Miss O'Donnel is awfully pretty and perfectly fascinating. Mother said, the night we were at Manzanares, that she was one of those girls whom most men fall irresistibly in love with; and—and I loved you so much, I couldn't help being jealous.”

“As if any man could evenseepoor little Pilar, when you were near!”I exclaimed, forgetting Dick's difference of opinion.

“Oh, I had faith in you, then. But next morning that pretty Mariquita handed me a letter, which I was sure was from you, as she hid it behind a tin of hot water. I was taking it, when mother saw, and snatched it away. You can't imagine the things I said to her, to make her give it back. I was so furious, that for once in my life I wasn't in the least afraid, and I would have tried to rush past her and run out to you, when she'd refused to give the letter up, but I wasn't dressed. My room had no door of its own. I had to go through mother's room to get[pg 260]out; and before I knew what she was doing, she'd slammed the door between us, locking it on her side. I hadn't even a proper window, only a little barred, square thing, high up in the wall. I couldn't scream for help, even if I hadn't been ashamed to make a scene in a strange hotel; so what was I to do.

“She kept me there, wild with rage against her, for quite an hour after I was dressed and ready to dart out when I had the chance; but at last she unlocked the door, looking very grave.‘I've opened your letter,’she said,‘and read it, as it was my duty and my right to do. It is different from what I expected, and I've decided after all that it's as well you should have it.’

“Then she handed me a torn envelope, and I recognized it as the one we had crumpled up between us when she snatched it away. Your handwriting was on it, and I never doubted it was yours inside, though it looked as if you'd written in a hurry, with a bad pen. No name was signed; but the letter said you thought it best to tell me, without waiting longer, that you feared we'd both been hasty and made a mistake in our feelings. Our meeting was romantic, and we'd been carried away by our youth and hot blood. Now you'd had time to see that it would be unwise of me to give up a man like the Duke of Carmona for one unworthy enough to have fallen in love with another girl. Accordingly, you released me from all obligations, and took it for granted that you were also free. Then you bade me good-bye, wishing me a happy future in case your car and the Duke's happened to go on by different ways. Do you wonder I tried to hate you, and that I said‘yes’the very next night, when the Duke asked me again if I wouldn't change my mind and marry him?”

For answer, I caught her against my breast, and we clung to each other as if we could never part.

“Such a promise is no promise,”I said at last.“I have you, and I don't mean to let you go, lest I lose you for ever. Monica, will you trust yourself to me, and run away with me to-night?”

“Yes,”she whispered.“I daren't go back to them. But what shall we do?”

[pg 261]“I'll tell you what I've been thinking,”I said.“My car isn't far off. Colonel O'Donnel and Pilar, who'd do anything for you and me, are in the cathedral. Just outside this chapel the man who locked us in is waiting for my signal to open the door. With the O'Donnels and Dick Waring to see you through, will you motor with me to Cadiz, take ship for Gibraltar, and marry me on English soil?”

“Suppose there should be no ship for days?”she hesitated.

“There is one nearly every day; but at worst I can hire a boat of some sort.”

“Once we were in Gibraltar, you'd be out of reach if the Duke tried to take revenge,”she said.“Yes, Iwillgo! I love you and I can't give you up again. Oh, Ramón, I never would have promised to marry him, if I hadn't longed to show you that—that I didn't care, and that there was someone who wanted me very much, if you didn't.”

“How like a woman!”I exclaimed, laughing—for I could laugh now.

“He has only kissed my hand,”she went on,“and I hated even that.”

“Yet you're wearing his brooch,”a returning flash of jealousy made me say;“and a mantilla, to please him.”

“The brooch is his mother's. So is the mantilla. She at least has been kind; so I let her put them both on for me to-day, when she asked.”

“Kind? When there's time I'll tell you one or two things. But now there's no time for anything except to take you away.”

“Listen! The Miserere has begun,”she said.“Has it been long? I heard it only now. Can we get out before it's over?”

“Of course we can—though not quite as easily, perhaps, as if the crowd were moving with us. However, we can't afford to wait.”

“What wonderful music!”Monica whispered.“I wish I dared to feel it were blessing us.”

“Yes, feel it so,”I said, and involuntarily was silent to listen[pg 262]for an instant to the melodious flood which swept from aisle to aisle in golden billows. Out from the wave of organ music and men's voices, boyish soprano notes sprayed high, flinging their bright crystals up, up, until they fell, shattered, from the vaulted ceiling of stone.

From each dimly seen column shot forth one of those slender-stemmed, flaming white lilies of light, such as had bloomed in Our Lady's garden, as thepasosmoved blossoming through the streets. It seemed as if they might have been gathered and replanted here, to lighten the darkness; and as the music soared and sank, its waves set the lily-flames flickering.

I peered out, and saw my man hovering near. In the gloom he did not catch the signal I gave him with my hand, but when I shook a handkerchief between the gratings he came quickly. As he unlocked the doors I slid the promised bribe into his palm; and having glanced about to make sure as far as possible that we were not watched, I called Monica.

“Take us out by the nearest way,”I said; and the man began to hurry us officiously through the crowd.

Monica clung to me tightly, and I could feel the tremblings that ran through her body. My heart was pounding too; for it is when the ship is nearest home, after a stormy voyage, that the captain remembers he has nerves. It seemed too marvellous to be true, that the girl was mine at last, and yet—what could separate us, now that I held her close against my side, and she was ready to go with me, out of her world into mine?

“This way, this way, señorito,”our guide warned me, plucking at my arm as I steered ahead, confused by a thousand moving shadows. I followed, brushing sharply against a tall man in conicalcapuchaand trailing robe of blue. He turned, his masked face close to mine, so close that even in the dusk I caught a flash of glittering eyes. Then, giving me a sudden push, he cried out,“Help—murder! An anarchist—a free-thinker! To the rescue!”

It was Carmona's voice, and I knew instantly that he must[pg 263]have borrowed this dress from some friend in the cathedral—perhaps a member of thecofradìato which he himself belonged—so that he could search for me and Monica, without being seen by us.

Thrusting the girl behind me, yet keeping her close, I hurled him away, but he sprang at me again, and this time something glittered in his right hand. I fought with him for it, and pulled a slim length of steel up through his closed fingers, so that the sharp dagger-blade must have cut him to the bone. He gave a cry, and relaxed his grasp; but though he was disabled for the instant a dozen men in the crowd, which swirled round us now, caught and held me fast. Monica was wrenched from me; the dagger had fallen to the ground (but not before I had seen it was of Toledo make); the figure in the bluecapuchawas swept out of my sight, and I was fighting like a madman in a strait-jacket for freedom.

[pg 264]XXXIIOn the Road to CadizIt was a mouse who gnawed a hole in the net that entangled the lion.Now, I am no lion in importance, nor was Colonel O'Donnel's messenger of as little significance as a mouse; yet he was the last creature to whom I would have looked for succour in a moment of stress. Nevertheless to him I owed my rescue.“A mistake, a mistake,”he chirped, jumping about, bird-like, just outside the circle of struggling men.“I am a verger here; this gentleman was with me. He did nothing. He is a most respectable and twice wealthy person, a tourist whom I guide. He is innocent—no anarchist, no free-thinker. That other—that pretended brother—has made a practical joke. See, he has run away to escape consequences. There is nothing against this noble señor; you have it on the word of a verger.”Because it was bewilderingly dark, and they might have got the wrong man; because, too, the verger was probably right, and it had been a joke played upon them by a person who had now disappeared, the twelve or fifteen men who surrounded me fell back shamefacedly, glad on second thoughts to melt away before they could be identified and reproached for disturbing the public peace, and spoiling the music to which their King listened.I was free, but I would not leave the cathedral yet, for my hope was to find Monica again. I wandered in every direction, while the verger went off to bring Dick and the O'Donnels to meet me in the Orange Court.[pg 265]Pilar's delight in the first part of my story was dashed by the sequel. Of course, she said, it must come right in the end, since Monica and I understood each other at last. But just for the moment everything seemed difficult. The Duke was sure now that I was Casa Triana, and not Cristóbal O'Donnel. He would almost certainly make all the trouble he could, and a man of his influence could make a good deal. As his attempt to stick a dagger into me—by way of a quick solution—had been covered by thecapuchaof acofradìa, I could not take revenge by laying a counter accusation. I might say I had recognized his voice, and that I thought I had recognized the dagger bought in Toledo; but I could prove nothing, and the Duke would score.Still, as the Cherub remarked consolingly, he could not do much worse than force me out of Spain. Neither I, nor anyone else, had ever said in so many words that I was Cristóbal O'Donnel. If people had taken my identity for granted because of a few round-about hints, and because for a joke I had borrowed a friend's uniform for a day or two, nothing very serious could be made out of that after all; and as Cristóbal really was on leave, he need not be involved. He was a good officer, whose services were valued, and I was not to worry lest harm should come upon him. I need think only of Monica and of myself. Had I formed any idea of what to do next?“I must get Monica out of Carmona's house,”I said.“You'll have to lie in wait and snatch her from under their noses next time they show them,”suggested Dick;“unless—”“Unless?”“Carmona keeps his indoors until he's arranged to have yours politely deported.”“I can't be got rid of in an hour.”“You could to-morrow.”“I'm afraid you can,”sighed the Cherub,“and that, though I shall do my best, I may be powerless to help you.”“What if it were known that he saved the King yesterday?”Pilar asked her father.[pg 266]“The King is going away to-morrow. You know, he's off to England in a few days. Besides, the incident to-day will be hushed up. The King will know, of course, and a few others; but it will be kept out of the papers,—anyhow, until they've got their hands on both the men concerned.”“I've still got to-night,”I said,“and it's not eleven yet. I hoped that in the confusion Monica had given her mother and Carmona the slip, and that if I waited here I might find her again. I thought she might try to get back to the chapel where we had our talk, trusting that I'd look for her there. But she didn't come, and I searched everywhere in vain before I tried watching the crowd pass through the Court of Oranges. Now, I'm certain that Carmona or Lady Vale-Avon must have pounced upon her while I was surrounded, and forced her away. No doubt they're at home long ago. Why shouldn't I appeal to the English consul, and say that the Duke of Carmona's detaining an English girl in his house against her will?”“No use,”said the Cherub.“She's under age, and she's with her mother, who's visiting the Duchess.”“Then I'll go to Carmona's door and make such a row that they'll be obliged to let me in.”“You'd get into a police cell instead. A man's house is his castle, especially when it's a palace and he's a Duke.”I was silenced. I knew the Cherub was right; but it seemed monstrous that in this twentieth century such tyranny should divide a girl from her lover.When I had thought for a moment I said,“Anyhow, I shall go to the house and try to bribe a servant. Once in, I'd not come out without Monica. I've done two satisfactory things to-day by bribery and corruption, and I don't see why I shouldn't bring it off the third time.”“The Duke's servants have been in the employ of the family for years, and their fathers and grandfathers before them. No money would bribe them to deceive their master and mistress,”said the Cherub.[pg 267]“I shouldn't have thought either the Duke or his mother capable of inspiring such devotion.”“It isn't devotion—it's fear. To an unfaithful servant in that house—well, almost anything might happen.”“Have you any advice to give me, then?”I asked, in despair.The Cherub shook his head.“The prudent thing would be to go away to-night, and trust Lady Monica's loyalty. She can't be forced into marrying the Duke, you know; and if she breaks the engagement he'll have to let her alone, for dignity's sake.”“That might be prudent; but of course I won't do it.”“Of course you won't,”returned the Cherub, as if it went without saying.“Very well, then; matters are desperate, and desperate remedies must be tried; things can't be worse than they are. I shall hang about Carmona's house early in the morning, and when the first person comes out I'll go in. If I don't come out, you will know what's become of me; and I don't suppose in these days even a Duke can kill a man without getting into trouble?”“He would merely have you arrested as a housebreaker,”said the Cherub.“Well, I should have seen Monica first, and perhaps have got her on the right side of the door.”“We'll have a go at the business together,”said Dick.“It would be more sociable.”“All right, thank you,”said I.“Then something's settled; and these best of friends can go home and sleep.”“Sleep!”echoed Pilar scornfully.“Oh, if I were a man, and could dosomethingto punish the Duke!”“I wish you could set your bull at him,”said Dick.“Only, now I think of it, it'shisbull still.”Try as we might, it was impossible to persuade either Colonel O'Donnel or Pilar that they ought to return quietly to bed, if not to sleep. No, they would do nothing of the kind. Besides, no properly disposed person within ten miles of Seville would lie in bed that night. Processions would go on till early morning. Many[pg 268]people would watch them, or spend the hours till early mass in prayer in the cathedral, which would be open all night. Why should not the O'Donnel family do as others did?There was no answer to this; and it was finally arranged that, if they wished to rest at all, it should be at the hotel in the Plaza de San Fernando, where we had dined. That was to be the rendezvous; and the Cherub would engage the verger we knew to watch the Duke's house in the morning, bringing news of our fate to the hotel—if we did not bring it ourselves.Never—if I live beyond the allotted threescore years and ten—shall I forget that strange night of Holy Thursday in Seville.Dick and I wandered through the streets, and in the Plaza de la Constitución, where electric lamps and moonlight mingled bleakly, while never-endingcofradìaspassed.A sky of violet was like a veil of silky gauze, and as the moon slid down the steeps of heaven the vast dome paled. One by one the stars went out like spent matches; dawn was on its way. Electric lights flared and died, leaving a pearly dusk more mysterious than any twilight which falls with night.The crowds had thinned; but silent brotherhoods moved through streets where there was no other sound than the rustling of their feet, the tap of their leaders' silver batons. So faint was the dawn-dusk, that they were droves of shadows on their way back into night, their candle-lights lost stars. Now and then the clink of a baton brought to some half-shuttered window a face, to be presently joined by other faces, peering down at the dark processions of men and black-robed, penitent women.Outside the great east door of the cathedral halted apaso, like a huge golden car. Christ was nailed to a cross not yet lifted into place. A Roman soldier, of exaggerated height and sardonic features, stood reading the parchment with the mocking inscription about to be nailed above the thorn-crowned head. His evil mouth was curled in a satirical smile. Two centurions in armour sat their impatient horses, and gave directions for raising the cross. The effect was startling; for in this pale beginning of light,[pg 269]and the atmosphere of tingling exaltation which steeped the town, it was difficult not to believe that the terrible carved figures of wood had life, and that with the eyes of one's flesh one beheld the world's great tragedy.Somehow the impression of horror was but deepened by the fact that the bearers had come out from under the curtains of thepaso, to take off the large pads they wore on their heads, to drink water, and smoke cigarettes with the penitents who had rolled up the masks from their pale, damp faces. They might have been comrades of the Roman soldiers, in their obliviousness of that tortured form on the cross.It was not yet five o'clock when Dick and I plunged into the cool gloom of the cathedral, passing the spot where Carmona had struck at me, and the chapel where I had taken Monica. The stones were slippery as the floor of a ballroom, with wax dropped from innumerable candles, and the air was heavy with the smoke of stale incense.The searchlight of dawn could scarcely penetrate the black curtains which throughout Holy Week had draped the cathedral; therefore a solitary beam, like a bar of gold, slanted in through one superb window.The amethysts, emeralds, and rubies of incomparable painted glass transformed the yellow bar into a rainbow which streamed down the length of the majestic aisle and struck full upon a golden altar. Then slowly the jewelled band moved from the gold carvings, the flames dying as it passed. Travelling, still like a searchlight, it found the prostrate forms of sleeping men exhausted by their vigils, snatched out of veiling darkness kneeling women clad in black, and at last rested on the Holy Week monument itself, paled its myriad candles, and made pools of liquid gold on the vestments of priests who had knelt all night in adoration of the Host.“Say,”said Dick, half whispering,“I don't gush as a rule; but doesn't it look like the light of salvation coming to save lost souls?”Not a hotel in Seville had shut its doors that night of Holy[pg 270]Thursday; not aconcièrgehad done more than nod and wake out of a broken dream, for there had been an excited coming and going through all the dark hours.At six o'clock Dick and I were at thefonda, inquiring for Colonel O'Donnel and his daughter. They had come in at two, and were now asleep, it seemed; but had left a note for the señores. In this note we were assured that the friendly verger of last night's adventure would be lurking in the neighbourhood of Carmona's house as early as six o'clock, and should we want him we would know where he was to be found.We took bedrooms, bathed, dressed again, and after hot coffee and rolls decided that is was time to go on guard. To be sure, it was absurdly early; but by this time the Duke's household might be astir, and we must not risk letting Monica be carried away before we had had a chance to practise the gentle art of housebreaking.The clocks of Seville were spasmodically telling the hour of seven when we entered the narrow and dusky lane of the Calle de las Dueñas. So fast asleep were the shuttered windows that our mission seemed a fool's errand; but as we came in sight of the Duke's closed door the Cherub's messenger loomed out of the shadows.Unshaven and haggard, his eyes glittered like black beads in the daylight; and he greeted us excitedly.“Señores,”he began,“I was going to look for you at the hotel. A thing has happened. The Señor Colonel told me I must watch the house of His Grace the Duke, and let you know when you came if anyone had been out or in. Who would think of people starting upon a journey before the day is awake? But so it is. The Duke, whom I have seen in other years, has gone away in an automobile with his honourable mother and two other ladies.”“You are sure it was he?”I asked, completely taken aback.“Sure, my señorito. The car was a large grey car. And”—his face grew sly as a squirrel's—“I can tell you where it is going, if you would like to know.”[pg 271]“I want to know all you can tell,”I said.“Well, the grey car arrived a little before half-past six, I should think. In it there was only the young man who drives, dressed in leather.‘What is going to happen?’I asked myself. It seemed better to wait and see than run to the hotel to say,‘there's an automobile at the door for the Duke,’and perhaps find it gone, no one could tell where, when I got back. But I do not sleep on my feet. There are always ideas running in my head. I pretended to be strolling past, and stopping for a look at such a fine machine. Perhaps I had matches in my pocket, perhaps not; in any case I asked the young man in leather to give me a light for my cigarette. He did, and it was a natural thing to fall into talk.‘You make an early start,’I said. He nodded.‘Going far?’‘To Cadiz to-day, by Jerez.’That is all, honoured señores; but I tell it for what it is worth. A few minutes later the grand people came out, and the automobile shot away.”“Did they put on luggage?”I asked.“All the automobile would hold.”“By Jove!”exclaimed Dick.“Carmona's thrown sand in our eyes this time. Who'd have supposed he'd turn tail and run away like a coward in the midst of the Holy Week show, with the King still in town?”“I was a fool not to expect the unexpected,”I said.“If anyone except Colonel O'Donnel's man had told me I should have been between two minds whether to accept the story or not. But O'Donnel called him a trusty fellow; and he served me well last night. If we wait to verify his story, by the time we find out it's true the grey car will have got too long a start. I don't like Carmona's stealing off. It looks as if there were something up.”“He showed last night that he was desperate,”said Dick.“I guess we'd better get on the road before much grass grows.”“You're the best of friends,”said I. And paying the verger well for his services, we hurried back to the hotel to find Ropes and have the car got ready.It was still very early, and the Cherub and Pilar had not had[pg 272]many hours beauty sleep; but we could not leave for an indefinite absence without bidding them good-bye; and we were on our way to knock at Colonel O'Donnel's door when Pilar appeared from the room adjoining.A moment, and she understood everything.“You'll follow!”she exclaimed, without waiting to hear my plans.“And I'll go with him,”said Dick, looking wistfully at her; for he had not had his answer yet, and who could tell when he would have it now, or what it would be when it came?“Of course. I knew you would,”Pilar replied. And a light leaped up in her dark eyes. If it meant nothing warmer, it meant approval.“You'll want to go at once. Oh, Iamsorry you'll miss the fair. You don't know what a fairyland Seville is, with miles of streets and park roofed in with arches of coloured lights, like jewels; and papa has a tent in the gayest place, where we stay all day, and see our friends, and it's such fun visiting the booths and side-shows! But maybe next spring you'll come back for theferiawith your bride, Don Ramón; and as for you, Señor Waring—”“As for me?”repeated Dick, anxiously.“Am I not to come back before that?”“You're to come back when you like, and—papa will be glad to see you,”she answered, just as any conventional little señorita might have answered. But at least she had the kindness to blush; and I would have moved away to give Dick a last chance if at that moment the Cherub had not come out of his room.Instantly Pilar dashed into explanations, and between the three of us he soon had the history of events.No one on earth looks less practical than the dreamy-eyed, soft-voiced Cherub; yet it was he who thought of practical details which we had forgotten. He it was who reminded us that it would not be prudent to take Ropes away from Seville. As the man who said he had discovered the bomb, his evidence would be wanted, and if he disappeared it would look mysterious. His real connection with theMarquésof Casa Triana might be unearthed by the police; and because of that miserable affair at[pg 273]Barcelona, whose consequences were continually cropping up, some hideous story might be concocted and believed.Dick and I unhesitatingly decided to take the Cherub's advice, and leave Ropes behind. He was engaged in getting the car ready, and would no doubt be disappointed to hear that he was to be temporarily abandoned; but he would see the wisdom of such a course, and might be trusted to guard my interests. As for Dick, he might turn his back on the proceedings in Seville without danger, for he posed only as the employer of a man who had found the bomb; besides, as I suggested without glancing at Pilar, he could come back in a few days in case he were wanted to give evidence.Thus it was settled; at eight o'clock we had said good-bye to Pilarcita and the Cherub, softening the farewell with a hopeful“au revoir”; and with Ropes staring disconsolately after us, we flashed out of the Plaza de San Fernando.I drove, with Dick beside me, for there was no longer need for subterfuge. Carmona knew me for what I was, and I could help Monica more by defying him than by playing the old waiting game, of which I was tired.It seemed strange to be racing across country again in the car, after those fevered days in Seville. With the steering-wheel in my hand, the steady thrum of the motor seemed to say,“You'll do it; you'll do it;—I'll help you to do it.”The air was made of perfume—orange blossoms and acacias; and the vast flowery plain where Seville is queen gave us a tolerable road, on which the car ran lightly. Soaring snow peaks of fantastic shapes walled the green arena of rolling meadows, and the day was like a day of June.Save for the grey Lecomte, scarcely a motor had we seen since leaving Biarritz, except in Madrid; but now, when I tried to decipher the road hieroglyphics, the dust showed more than one track of pneus. Cars had come to Seville from Madrid forSemana Santa, and had evidently run out this way for a spin more than once. As I had not Ropes' detective talent I was unable to distinguish the Lecomte's tyre-marks from others.[pg 274]In sight of the conspicuous church tower at Utrera—ancient home of outlaws—we came upon a dusty white line diverging to Ecija. Pausing to question a road-mender, I remembered Colonel O'Donnel's story of the Seven Men of Ecija, and the curious bond between them and the Dukes of Carmona. But what brought the tale to my mind—unless it was the name of Ecija on the road-map and signpost, or the fact that we were now in the real heart of brigand-land—I could not have told.Yes, said the road-mender, he had seen an automobile go by—a big one, not long ago, steering as if for Jerez. Was it grey? He would not be sure, but at all events the thing was so grey with dust that had there been another colour underneath, no one could have seen it. Ladies in the car? Well, he was not positive, for it had gone by like a cannon-ball in a cloud of smoke; but there were several persons inside, and it was the only motor which had passed him to-day. Several cars had appeared in the distance yesterday, but they had turned back on the Seville side of Utrera.One automobile, a big one, apparently grey, and with several persons inside, had gone by at a tremendous pace not long before. That sounded as if the car we chased could not be far away. Our eyes searched the tell-tale dust, and found the sleek, straight trail of a pneu in the midst of wobbling cart tracks. We had but to follow that straight trail, then, I said, to come up with Carmona and interfere with his new plans.Now we were racing through a wide region of salt marsh, where within enclosures grazed hundreds of fierce black bulls, sooner or later to die in the arena. The country became desolate, and curiously sad. We met no more peasants' carts or laden donkeys as the road began to undulate among the foothills of distant mountain ranges.“What an ideal place for a band of Colonel O'Donnel'sbandidos, eh?”said Dick; then drew in his breath with a sharpness that cut the sentence short, as we whirled round a hummock at a turning of the road.

It was a mouse who gnawed a hole in the net that entangled the lion.

Now, I am no lion in importance, nor was Colonel O'Donnel's messenger of as little significance as a mouse; yet he was the last creature to whom I would have looked for succour in a moment of stress. Nevertheless to him I owed my rescue.

“A mistake, a mistake,”he chirped, jumping about, bird-like, just outside the circle of struggling men.“I am a verger here; this gentleman was with me. He did nothing. He is a most respectable and twice wealthy person, a tourist whom I guide. He is innocent—no anarchist, no free-thinker. That other—that pretended brother—has made a practical joke. See, he has run away to escape consequences. There is nothing against this noble señor; you have it on the word of a verger.”

Because it was bewilderingly dark, and they might have got the wrong man; because, too, the verger was probably right, and it had been a joke played upon them by a person who had now disappeared, the twelve or fifteen men who surrounded me fell back shamefacedly, glad on second thoughts to melt away before they could be identified and reproached for disturbing the public peace, and spoiling the music to which their King listened.

I was free, but I would not leave the cathedral yet, for my hope was to find Monica again. I wandered in every direction, while the verger went off to bring Dick and the O'Donnels to meet me in the Orange Court.

[pg 265]Pilar's delight in the first part of my story was dashed by the sequel. Of course, she said, it must come right in the end, since Monica and I understood each other at last. But just for the moment everything seemed difficult. The Duke was sure now that I was Casa Triana, and not Cristóbal O'Donnel. He would almost certainly make all the trouble he could, and a man of his influence could make a good deal. As his attempt to stick a dagger into me—by way of a quick solution—had been covered by thecapuchaof acofradìa, I could not take revenge by laying a counter accusation. I might say I had recognized his voice, and that I thought I had recognized the dagger bought in Toledo; but I could prove nothing, and the Duke would score.

Still, as the Cherub remarked consolingly, he could not do much worse than force me out of Spain. Neither I, nor anyone else, had ever said in so many words that I was Cristóbal O'Donnel. If people had taken my identity for granted because of a few round-about hints, and because for a joke I had borrowed a friend's uniform for a day or two, nothing very serious could be made out of that after all; and as Cristóbal really was on leave, he need not be involved. He was a good officer, whose services were valued, and I was not to worry lest harm should come upon him. I need think only of Monica and of myself. Had I formed any idea of what to do next?

“I must get Monica out of Carmona's house,”I said.

“You'll have to lie in wait and snatch her from under their noses next time they show them,”suggested Dick;“unless—”

“Unless?”

“Carmona keeps his indoors until he's arranged to have yours politely deported.”

“I can't be got rid of in an hour.”

“You could to-morrow.”

“I'm afraid you can,”sighed the Cherub,“and that, though I shall do my best, I may be powerless to help you.”

“What if it were known that he saved the King yesterday?”Pilar asked her father.

[pg 266]“The King is going away to-morrow. You know, he's off to England in a few days. Besides, the incident to-day will be hushed up. The King will know, of course, and a few others; but it will be kept out of the papers,—anyhow, until they've got their hands on both the men concerned.”

“I've still got to-night,”I said,“and it's not eleven yet. I hoped that in the confusion Monica had given her mother and Carmona the slip, and that if I waited here I might find her again. I thought she might try to get back to the chapel where we had our talk, trusting that I'd look for her there. But she didn't come, and I searched everywhere in vain before I tried watching the crowd pass through the Court of Oranges. Now, I'm certain that Carmona or Lady Vale-Avon must have pounced upon her while I was surrounded, and forced her away. No doubt they're at home long ago. Why shouldn't I appeal to the English consul, and say that the Duke of Carmona's detaining an English girl in his house against her will?”

“No use,”said the Cherub.“She's under age, and she's with her mother, who's visiting the Duchess.”

“Then I'll go to Carmona's door and make such a row that they'll be obliged to let me in.”

“You'd get into a police cell instead. A man's house is his castle, especially when it's a palace and he's a Duke.”

I was silenced. I knew the Cherub was right; but it seemed monstrous that in this twentieth century such tyranny should divide a girl from her lover.

When I had thought for a moment I said,“Anyhow, I shall go to the house and try to bribe a servant. Once in, I'd not come out without Monica. I've done two satisfactory things to-day by bribery and corruption, and I don't see why I shouldn't bring it off the third time.”

“The Duke's servants have been in the employ of the family for years, and their fathers and grandfathers before them. No money would bribe them to deceive their master and mistress,”said the Cherub.

[pg 267]“I shouldn't have thought either the Duke or his mother capable of inspiring such devotion.”

“It isn't devotion—it's fear. To an unfaithful servant in that house—well, almost anything might happen.”

“Have you any advice to give me, then?”I asked, in despair.

The Cherub shook his head.“The prudent thing would be to go away to-night, and trust Lady Monica's loyalty. She can't be forced into marrying the Duke, you know; and if she breaks the engagement he'll have to let her alone, for dignity's sake.”

“That might be prudent; but of course I won't do it.”

“Of course you won't,”returned the Cherub, as if it went without saying.

“Very well, then; matters are desperate, and desperate remedies must be tried; things can't be worse than they are. I shall hang about Carmona's house early in the morning, and when the first person comes out I'll go in. If I don't come out, you will know what's become of me; and I don't suppose in these days even a Duke can kill a man without getting into trouble?”

“He would merely have you arrested as a housebreaker,”said the Cherub.

“Well, I should have seen Monica first, and perhaps have got her on the right side of the door.”

“We'll have a go at the business together,”said Dick.“It would be more sociable.”

“All right, thank you,”said I.“Then something's settled; and these best of friends can go home and sleep.”

“Sleep!”echoed Pilar scornfully.“Oh, if I were a man, and could dosomethingto punish the Duke!”

“I wish you could set your bull at him,”said Dick.“Only, now I think of it, it'shisbull still.”

Try as we might, it was impossible to persuade either Colonel O'Donnel or Pilar that they ought to return quietly to bed, if not to sleep. No, they would do nothing of the kind. Besides, no properly disposed person within ten miles of Seville would lie in bed that night. Processions would go on till early morning. Many[pg 268]people would watch them, or spend the hours till early mass in prayer in the cathedral, which would be open all night. Why should not the O'Donnel family do as others did?

There was no answer to this; and it was finally arranged that, if they wished to rest at all, it should be at the hotel in the Plaza de San Fernando, where we had dined. That was to be the rendezvous; and the Cherub would engage the verger we knew to watch the Duke's house in the morning, bringing news of our fate to the hotel—if we did not bring it ourselves.

Never—if I live beyond the allotted threescore years and ten—shall I forget that strange night of Holy Thursday in Seville.

Dick and I wandered through the streets, and in the Plaza de la Constitución, where electric lamps and moonlight mingled bleakly, while never-endingcofradìaspassed.

A sky of violet was like a veil of silky gauze, and as the moon slid down the steeps of heaven the vast dome paled. One by one the stars went out like spent matches; dawn was on its way. Electric lights flared and died, leaving a pearly dusk more mysterious than any twilight which falls with night.

The crowds had thinned; but silent brotherhoods moved through streets where there was no other sound than the rustling of their feet, the tap of their leaders' silver batons. So faint was the dawn-dusk, that they were droves of shadows on their way back into night, their candle-lights lost stars. Now and then the clink of a baton brought to some half-shuttered window a face, to be presently joined by other faces, peering down at the dark processions of men and black-robed, penitent women.

Outside the great east door of the cathedral halted apaso, like a huge golden car. Christ was nailed to a cross not yet lifted into place. A Roman soldier, of exaggerated height and sardonic features, stood reading the parchment with the mocking inscription about to be nailed above the thorn-crowned head. His evil mouth was curled in a satirical smile. Two centurions in armour sat their impatient horses, and gave directions for raising the cross. The effect was startling; for in this pale beginning of light,[pg 269]and the atmosphere of tingling exaltation which steeped the town, it was difficult not to believe that the terrible carved figures of wood had life, and that with the eyes of one's flesh one beheld the world's great tragedy.

Somehow the impression of horror was but deepened by the fact that the bearers had come out from under the curtains of thepaso, to take off the large pads they wore on their heads, to drink water, and smoke cigarettes with the penitents who had rolled up the masks from their pale, damp faces. They might have been comrades of the Roman soldiers, in their obliviousness of that tortured form on the cross.

It was not yet five o'clock when Dick and I plunged into the cool gloom of the cathedral, passing the spot where Carmona had struck at me, and the chapel where I had taken Monica. The stones were slippery as the floor of a ballroom, with wax dropped from innumerable candles, and the air was heavy with the smoke of stale incense.

The searchlight of dawn could scarcely penetrate the black curtains which throughout Holy Week had draped the cathedral; therefore a solitary beam, like a bar of gold, slanted in through one superb window.

The amethysts, emeralds, and rubies of incomparable painted glass transformed the yellow bar into a rainbow which streamed down the length of the majestic aisle and struck full upon a golden altar. Then slowly the jewelled band moved from the gold carvings, the flames dying as it passed. Travelling, still like a searchlight, it found the prostrate forms of sleeping men exhausted by their vigils, snatched out of veiling darkness kneeling women clad in black, and at last rested on the Holy Week monument itself, paled its myriad candles, and made pools of liquid gold on the vestments of priests who had knelt all night in adoration of the Host.

“Say,”said Dick, half whispering,“I don't gush as a rule; but doesn't it look like the light of salvation coming to save lost souls?”

Not a hotel in Seville had shut its doors that night of Holy[pg 270]Thursday; not aconcièrgehad done more than nod and wake out of a broken dream, for there had been an excited coming and going through all the dark hours.

At six o'clock Dick and I were at thefonda, inquiring for Colonel O'Donnel and his daughter. They had come in at two, and were now asleep, it seemed; but had left a note for the señores. In this note we were assured that the friendly verger of last night's adventure would be lurking in the neighbourhood of Carmona's house as early as six o'clock, and should we want him we would know where he was to be found.

We took bedrooms, bathed, dressed again, and after hot coffee and rolls decided that is was time to go on guard. To be sure, it was absurdly early; but by this time the Duke's household might be astir, and we must not risk letting Monica be carried away before we had had a chance to practise the gentle art of housebreaking.

The clocks of Seville were spasmodically telling the hour of seven when we entered the narrow and dusky lane of the Calle de las Dueñas. So fast asleep were the shuttered windows that our mission seemed a fool's errand; but as we came in sight of the Duke's closed door the Cherub's messenger loomed out of the shadows.

Unshaven and haggard, his eyes glittered like black beads in the daylight; and he greeted us excitedly.“Señores,”he began,“I was going to look for you at the hotel. A thing has happened. The Señor Colonel told me I must watch the house of His Grace the Duke, and let you know when you came if anyone had been out or in. Who would think of people starting upon a journey before the day is awake? But so it is. The Duke, whom I have seen in other years, has gone away in an automobile with his honourable mother and two other ladies.”

“You are sure it was he?”I asked, completely taken aback.

“Sure, my señorito. The car was a large grey car. And”—his face grew sly as a squirrel's—“I can tell you where it is going, if you would like to know.”

[pg 271]“I want to know all you can tell,”I said.

“Well, the grey car arrived a little before half-past six, I should think. In it there was only the young man who drives, dressed in leather.‘What is going to happen?’I asked myself. It seemed better to wait and see than run to the hotel to say,‘there's an automobile at the door for the Duke,’and perhaps find it gone, no one could tell where, when I got back. But I do not sleep on my feet. There are always ideas running in my head. I pretended to be strolling past, and stopping for a look at such a fine machine. Perhaps I had matches in my pocket, perhaps not; in any case I asked the young man in leather to give me a light for my cigarette. He did, and it was a natural thing to fall into talk.‘You make an early start,’I said. He nodded.‘Going far?’‘To Cadiz to-day, by Jerez.’That is all, honoured señores; but I tell it for what it is worth. A few minutes later the grand people came out, and the automobile shot away.”

“Did they put on luggage?”I asked.

“All the automobile would hold.”

“By Jove!”exclaimed Dick.“Carmona's thrown sand in our eyes this time. Who'd have supposed he'd turn tail and run away like a coward in the midst of the Holy Week show, with the King still in town?”

“I was a fool not to expect the unexpected,”I said.“If anyone except Colonel O'Donnel's man had told me I should have been between two minds whether to accept the story or not. But O'Donnel called him a trusty fellow; and he served me well last night. If we wait to verify his story, by the time we find out it's true the grey car will have got too long a start. I don't like Carmona's stealing off. It looks as if there were something up.”

“He showed last night that he was desperate,”said Dick.“I guess we'd better get on the road before much grass grows.”

“You're the best of friends,”said I. And paying the verger well for his services, we hurried back to the hotel to find Ropes and have the car got ready.

It was still very early, and the Cherub and Pilar had not had[pg 272]many hours beauty sleep; but we could not leave for an indefinite absence without bidding them good-bye; and we were on our way to knock at Colonel O'Donnel's door when Pilar appeared from the room adjoining.

A moment, and she understood everything.“You'll follow!”she exclaimed, without waiting to hear my plans.

“And I'll go with him,”said Dick, looking wistfully at her; for he had not had his answer yet, and who could tell when he would have it now, or what it would be when it came?

“Of course. I knew you would,”Pilar replied. And a light leaped up in her dark eyes. If it meant nothing warmer, it meant approval.“You'll want to go at once. Oh, Iamsorry you'll miss the fair. You don't know what a fairyland Seville is, with miles of streets and park roofed in with arches of coloured lights, like jewels; and papa has a tent in the gayest place, where we stay all day, and see our friends, and it's such fun visiting the booths and side-shows! But maybe next spring you'll come back for theferiawith your bride, Don Ramón; and as for you, Señor Waring—”

“As for me?”repeated Dick, anxiously.“Am I not to come back before that?”

“You're to come back when you like, and—papa will be glad to see you,”she answered, just as any conventional little señorita might have answered. But at least she had the kindness to blush; and I would have moved away to give Dick a last chance if at that moment the Cherub had not come out of his room.

Instantly Pilar dashed into explanations, and between the three of us he soon had the history of events.

No one on earth looks less practical than the dreamy-eyed, soft-voiced Cherub; yet it was he who thought of practical details which we had forgotten. He it was who reminded us that it would not be prudent to take Ropes away from Seville. As the man who said he had discovered the bomb, his evidence would be wanted, and if he disappeared it would look mysterious. His real connection with theMarquésof Casa Triana might be unearthed by the police; and because of that miserable affair at[pg 273]Barcelona, whose consequences were continually cropping up, some hideous story might be concocted and believed.

Dick and I unhesitatingly decided to take the Cherub's advice, and leave Ropes behind. He was engaged in getting the car ready, and would no doubt be disappointed to hear that he was to be temporarily abandoned; but he would see the wisdom of such a course, and might be trusted to guard my interests. As for Dick, he might turn his back on the proceedings in Seville without danger, for he posed only as the employer of a man who had found the bomb; besides, as I suggested without glancing at Pilar, he could come back in a few days in case he were wanted to give evidence.

Thus it was settled; at eight o'clock we had said good-bye to Pilarcita and the Cherub, softening the farewell with a hopeful“au revoir”; and with Ropes staring disconsolately after us, we flashed out of the Plaza de San Fernando.

I drove, with Dick beside me, for there was no longer need for subterfuge. Carmona knew me for what I was, and I could help Monica more by defying him than by playing the old waiting game, of which I was tired.

It seemed strange to be racing across country again in the car, after those fevered days in Seville. With the steering-wheel in my hand, the steady thrum of the motor seemed to say,“You'll do it; you'll do it;—I'll help you to do it.”

The air was made of perfume—orange blossoms and acacias; and the vast flowery plain where Seville is queen gave us a tolerable road, on which the car ran lightly. Soaring snow peaks of fantastic shapes walled the green arena of rolling meadows, and the day was like a day of June.

Save for the grey Lecomte, scarcely a motor had we seen since leaving Biarritz, except in Madrid; but now, when I tried to decipher the road hieroglyphics, the dust showed more than one track of pneus. Cars had come to Seville from Madrid forSemana Santa, and had evidently run out this way for a spin more than once. As I had not Ropes' detective talent I was unable to distinguish the Lecomte's tyre-marks from others.

[pg 274]In sight of the conspicuous church tower at Utrera—ancient home of outlaws—we came upon a dusty white line diverging to Ecija. Pausing to question a road-mender, I remembered Colonel O'Donnel's story of the Seven Men of Ecija, and the curious bond between them and the Dukes of Carmona. But what brought the tale to my mind—unless it was the name of Ecija on the road-map and signpost, or the fact that we were now in the real heart of brigand-land—I could not have told.

Yes, said the road-mender, he had seen an automobile go by—a big one, not long ago, steering as if for Jerez. Was it grey? He would not be sure, but at all events the thing was so grey with dust that had there been another colour underneath, no one could have seen it. Ladies in the car? Well, he was not positive, for it had gone by like a cannon-ball in a cloud of smoke; but there were several persons inside, and it was the only motor which had passed him to-day. Several cars had appeared in the distance yesterday, but they had turned back on the Seville side of Utrera.

One automobile, a big one, apparently grey, and with several persons inside, had gone by at a tremendous pace not long before. That sounded as if the car we chased could not be far away. Our eyes searched the tell-tale dust, and found the sleek, straight trail of a pneu in the midst of wobbling cart tracks. We had but to follow that straight trail, then, I said, to come up with Carmona and interfere with his new plans.

Now we were racing through a wide region of salt marsh, where within enclosures grazed hundreds of fierce black bulls, sooner or later to die in the arena. The country became desolate, and curiously sad. We met no more peasants' carts or laden donkeys as the road began to undulate among the foothills of distant mountain ranges.

“What an ideal place for a band of Colonel O'Donnel'sbandidos, eh?”said Dick; then drew in his breath with a sharpness that cut the sentence short, as we whirled round a hummock at a turning of the road.

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