In the Palace of the King Part 8

"And the less you learn about the world, the better," answered the young soldier shortly.

"But you have never answered one, have you?" asked Dolores, with a scorn that showed how sure she was of his reply.

"No." He spoke thoughtfully. "I once thought of answering one. I meant to tell her that she was out of her senses, but I changed my mind. That was long ago, before I knew you--when I was eighteen."

"Ever since you were a boy!"

The look of wonder was not quite gone from her face yet, but she was beginning to understand more clearly, though still very far from distinctly. It did not occur to her once that such things could be temptations to the brilliant young leader whom every woman admired and every man flattered, and that only his devoted love for her had kept him out of ign.o.ble adventures since he had grown to be a man. Had she seen that, she would have loved him even better, if it were possible. It was all, as she had said, shameless and abominable. She had thought that she knew much of evil, and she had even told him so that evening, but this was far beyond anything she had dreamt of in her innocent thoughts, and she instinctively felt that there were lower depths of degradation to which a woman could fall, and of which she would not try to guess the vileness and horror.

"Shall I burn the flowers, too?" asked Don John, taking them in his hand.

"The flowers? No. They are innocent and fresh. What have they to do with her? Give them to me."

He raised them to his lips, looking at her, and then held them out. She took them, and kissed them, as he had done, and they both smiled happily. Then she fastened them in her hair.

"No one will see me to-night but you," she said. "I may wear flowers in my hair like a peasant woman!"

"How they make the gold gleam!" he exclaimed, as he looked. "It is almost time that my men came back," he said sadly. "When I go down to the court, I shall dismiss them. After the royal supper I shall try and come here again and see you. By that time everything will be arranged. I have thought of almost everything already. My mother will provide you with everything you need. To-morrow evening I can leave this place myself to go and see her, as I always do."

He always spoke of Dona Magdalena Quixada as his mother--he had never known his own.

Dolores rose from her seat, for he was ready to go.

"I trust you in everything," she said simply. "I do not need to know how you will accomplish it all--it is enough to know that you will. Tell Inez, if you can--protect her if my father is angry with her."

He held out his hand to take hers, and she was going to give it, as she had done before. But it was too little. Before he knew it she had thrown her arms round his neck, and was kissing him, with little cries and broken words of love. Then she drew back suddenly.

"I could not help it," she said. "Now lock me in. No--do not say good-by--even for two hours!"

"I will come back as soon as I can," he answered, and with a long look he left her, closed the door and locked it after him, leaving her alone.

She stood a few moments looking at the panels as if her sight could pierce them and reach him on the other side, and she tried to hold the last look she had seen in his eyes. Hardly two minutes had elapsed before she heard voices and footsteps in the bedchamber. Don John spoke in short sentences now and then to his servants, and his voice was commanding though it was kindly. It seemed strange to be so near him in his life; she wondered whether she should some day always be near him, as she was now, and nearer; she blushed, all alone. So many things had happened, and he and she had found so much to say that nothing had been said at all of what was to follow her flight to Villagarcia. She was to leave for the Quixadas' house before morning, but Quixada and his wife could not protect her against her father, if he found out where she was, unless she were married. After that, neither Mendoza nor any one else, save the King himself, would presume to interfere with the liberty of Don John of Austria's wife. All Spain would rise to protect her--she was sure of that. But they had said nothing about a marriage and had wasted time over that unknown woman's abominable letter. Since she reasoned it out to herself, she saw that in all probability the ceremony would take place as soon as Don John reached Villagarcia. He was powerful enough to demand the necessary permission of the Archbishop, and he would bring it with him; but no priest, even in the absence of a written order, would refuse to marry him if he desired it. Between the real power he possessed and the vast popularity he enjoyed, he could command almost anything.

She heard his voice distinctly just then, though she was not listening for it. He was telling a servant to bring white shoes. The fact struck her because she had never seen him wear any that were not black or yellow. She smiled and wished that she might bring him his white shoes and hang his order of the Golden Fleece round his neck, and breathe on the polished hilt of his sword and rub it with soft leather. She had seen Eudaldo furbish her father's weapons in that way since she had been a child.

It had all come so suddenly in the end. Shading her eyes from the candles with her hand, she rested one elbow on the table, and tried to think of what should naturally have happened, of what must have happened if the unknown voice among the courtiers had not laughed and roused her father's anger and brought all the rest. Don John would have come to the door, and Eudaldo would have let him in--because no one could refuse him anything and he was the King's brother. He would have spent half an hour with her in the little drawing-room, and it would have been a constrained meeting, with Inez near, though she would presently have left them alone. Then, by this time, she would have gone down with the d.u.c.h.ess Alvarez and the other maids of honour, and by and by she would have followed the Queen when she entered the throne room with the King and Don John; and she might not have exchanged another word with the latter for a whole day, or two days. But now it seemed almost certain that she was to be his wife within the coming week. He was in the next room.

"Do not put the sword away," she heard him say. "Leave it here on the table."

Of course; what should he do with a sword in his court dress? But if he had met her father in the corridor, coming to her after the supper, he would have been unarmed. Her father, on the contrary, being on actual duty, wore the sword of his rank, like any other officer of the guards, and the King wore a rapier as a part of his state dress.

She was astonished at the distinctness with which she heard what was said in the next room. That was doubtless due to the construction of the vault, as she vaguely guessed. It was true that Don John spoke very clearly, but she could hear the servants' subdued answers almost as well, when she listened. It seemed to her that he took but a very short time to dress.

"I have the key of that room," he said presently. "I have my papers there. You are at liberty till midnight. My hat, my gloves. Call my gentlemen, one of you, and tell them to meet me in the corridor."

She could almost hear him drawing on his gloves. One of the servants went out.

"Fadrique," said Don John, "leave out my riding-cloak. I may like to walk on the terrace in the moonlight, and it is cold. Have my drink ready at midnight and wait for me. Send Gil to sleep, for he was up last night."

There was a strange pleasure in hearing his familiar orders and small directions and in seeing how thoughtful he was for his servants. She knew that he had always refused to be surrounded by valets and gentlemen-in-waiting, and lived very simply when he could, but it was different to be brought into such close contact with his life. There was a wonderful gentleness in his ways that contrasted widely with her father's despotic manner and harsh tone when he gave orders. Mendoza believed himself the type and model of a soldier and a gentleman, and he maintained that without rigid discipline there could be no order and no safety at home or in the army. But between him and Don John there was all the difference that separates the born leader of men from the mere martinet.

Dolores listened. It was clear that Don John was not going to send Fadrique away in order to see her again before he went down to the throne room, though she had almost hoped he might.

On the contrary, some one else came. She heard Fadrique announce him.

"The Captain Don Juan de Escobedo is in waiting, your Highness," said the servant. "There is also Adonis."

"Adonis!" Don John laughed, not at the name, for it was familiar to him, but at the mere mention of the person who bore it and who was the King's dwarf jester, Miguel de Antona, commonly known by his cla.s.sic nickname.

"Bring Adonis here--he is an old friend."

The door opened again, and Dolores heard the well-known voice of the hunchback, clear as a woman's, scornful and full of evil laughter,--the sort of voice that is heard instantly in a crowd, though it is not always recognizable. The fellow came in, talking loud.

"Ave Caesar!" he cried from the door. "Hail, conqueror! All hail, thou favoured of heaven, of man,--and of the ladies!"

"The ladies too?" laughed Don John, probably amused by the dwarfs antics. "Who told you that?"

"The cook, sir. For as you rode up to the gate this afternoon a scullery maid saw you from the cellar grating and has been raving mad ever since, singing of the sun, moon, and undying love, until the kitchen is more like a mad-house than this house would be if the Day of Judgment came before or after Lent."

"Do you fast in Lent, Adonis?"

"I fast rigidly three times a day, my lord conqueror,--no, six, for I eat nothing either just before or just after my breakfast, my dinner, and my supper. No monk can do better than that, for at those times I eat nothing at all."

"If you said your prayers as often as you fast, you would be in a good way," observed Don John.

"I do, sir. I say a short grace before and after eating. Why have you come to Madrid, my lord? Do you not know that Madrid is the worst, the wickedest, the dirtiest, vilest, and most d.a.m.nable habitation devised by man for the corruption of humanity? Especially in the month of November?

Has your lordship any reasonable reason for this unreason of coming here, when the streets are full of mud, and men's hearts are packed like saddle-bags with all the sins they have acc.u.mulated since Easter and mean to unload at Christmas? Even your old friends are shocked to see so young and honest a prince in such a place!"

"My old friends? Who?"

"I saw Saint John the Conqueror graciously wave his hand to a most highly respectable old n.o.bleman this afternoon, and the n.o.bleman was so much shocked that he could not stir an arm to return the salutation! His legs must have done something, though, for he seemed to kick his own horse up from the ground under him. The shock must have been terrible.

As for me, I laughed aloud, which made both the old n.o.bleman and Don Julius Caesar of Austria exceedingly angry. Get before me, Don Fadrique!

I am afraid of the terror of the Moors,--and no shame to me either! A poor dwarf, against a man who tears armies to shreds,--and sends scullery maids into hysterics! What is a poor crippled jester compared with a powerful scullery maid or an army of heathen Moriscoes? Give me that sword, Fadrique, or I am a dead man!"

But Don John was laughing good-naturedly.

"So it was you, Adonis? I might have-known your voice, I should think."

"No one ever knows my voice, sir. It is not a voice, it is a freak of grammar. It is masculine, feminine, and neuter in gender, singular by nature, and generally accusative, and it is optative in mood and full of acute accents. If you can find such another voice in creation, sir, I will forfeit mine in the King's councils."

Adonis laughed now, and Dolores remembered the laughter she had heard from the window.

"Does his Majesty consult you on matters of state?" inquired Don John.

"Answer quickly, for I must be going."

"It takes twice as long to tell a story to two men, as to tell it to one,--when you have to tell them different stories,"

"Go, Fadrique," said Don John, "and shut the door."

The dwarf, seeing the servant gone, beckoned Don John to the other side of the room.