The Azure Rose Part 28

Cartaret was glad that the darkness hid his flushed cheek as he answered:

"I have recently heard of that contingency."

"It never occurs," said Eskurola quickly, "because the Basque always chooses not to permit himself to be saved. It is a traditional law among us as strong as that against the disgrace of suicide."

Their feet were sounding over a bridge: the bridge, as Cartaret reflected, to the castle's moat. Through the light of the torches, the great gray walls of the pile climbed above him and disappeared into the night. A studded door, with mighty heaving of bolts, swung open before them, and they pa.s.sed through into a vaulted gateway. The pine-knots cast dancing shadows on the stones.

Into what medieval world was he being admitted? Did Vitoria indeed inhabit it? And if she did, what difficulties and dangers must he overcome before ever he could take her thence?

Don Ricardo was speaking.

"I welcome you to my poor home," he said.

Cartaret's heart beat high. He was ready for any difficulty, for any danger....

With a solemn boom the great gate swung shut behind him. He felt that it had shut out the Twentieth Century.

CHAPTER XIV

SOMETHING OR OTHER ABOUT TRADITIONS

... Since we must part, down right With happy day; burdens well borne are light.

--Donne: _Eleg. XIII_.

Cartaret was lighted by his host himself to a bedroom high up in the castle and deep within it--a bedroom big enough and dreary enough to hold all the ghosts of Spain. An old man-servant brought him a supper calculated to stay the hunger of a shipwrecked merchant-crew. He lay down in a great four-poster bed both canopied and curtained, and, in spite of his weariness, he tossed for hours, wondering whether Vitoria was also somewhere within those grim walls and what course he was to pursue in regard to her.

The same uncertainty gripped him when breakfast was brought to his bedside in the early morning. Was this, after all, Vitoria's home; and if it was, had she returned to it? Supposing an affirmative answer to these questions, what was he to say to her brother? So far, thank Heaven, Don Ricardo, though he had once or twice looked queerly at the American, had been too polite to make awkward inquiries, but such inquiries were so natural that they were bound soon to be made; and Cartaret could not remain forever an unexplained and self-invited guest in the castle of his almost involuntary host. The guest recalled all that he had heard of the national and family pride and traditions of the Eskurolas, and only his native hopefulness sustained him.

He found his own way down twisting stairs and into a vast court-yard across which servants were pa.s.sing. The great gate was open, and he stepped through it toward the battlemented terrace that he saw beyond.

His first shock was there. The bridge that he had crossed the night before was indeed a drawbridge and did indeed span the castle-moat, but the bridge was unrailed and that moat was a terrible thing. It was no pit of twenty or thirty feet dug by the hand of man. The terrace to which the castle clung was separated from that to which climbed the steep approach by a natural chasm of at least twelve yards across, with sheer sides, like those of a glacial creva.s.se, shooting downwards into black invisibility and echoing upward the thunderous rush of unseen waters.

Leaning on the weather-worn wall that climbed along the edge of this precipice and guarded a broad promenade between it and the castle, Cartaret looked with a new sensation at the marvelous scene about him.

Behind rose the frowning castle, a maze of parapets and towers, built against that naked, snow-capped, chalcedonous peak. In front, falling away through a hundred gradations of green, a riot of luxuriant vegetation, lay the now apparently uninhabited country through which he had ridden, and beyond this, circling it like the teeth of the celestial dragon that the Chinese believe is to swallow the sun, rose row on row of bare mountains, ridges and pinnacles blue and gray.

A hand fell on Cartaret's shoulder. He turned to find Don Ricardo standing beside him. The giant gave every appearance of having been up and about for hours, and, despite his bulk, he had approached his guest unheard.

"I trust that you, sir, have slept well in my poor house."

Cartaret replied that he had slept like a top.

"And that you could eat of the little breakfast which my servants provided?"

"I made a wonderful breakfast," said Cartaret.

"It is good, sir. If you can bear with my house, it is yours for so long as you care to honor it with your presence."

Cartaret knew that this must be only an exaggerated fashion of speech, but he chose to take it literally.

"That's very good of you," he said. "I haven't ridden for years and I'm rather done up. If you really don't mind, I think I will rest here over another night."

Don Ricardo seemed unprepared for this, but he checked a frown and bowed gravely.

"A year would be too short for me," he vowed.

They fell to talking, the host now trying to turn the conversation into the valley, the guest holding it fast to the castle-heights.

"It is a beautiful place," said Cartaret; "I don't know when I've seen anything to compare with it; and yet I should think you'd find it rather lonely."

"Not lonely, sir," said the Basque. "The hunting in the valley is a compensation. For example, where you see those oaks about the curve of that river, I hunted, not ten days ago, a wolf as large as those for which my ancestors paid the wolf-money."

"Still," Cartaret persisted, "you do live here quite alone, don't you?"

He knew that he was impudent, and he felt that only his host's reverence for the laws of hospitality prevented an open resentment.

Nevertheless, Cartaret was bound to find out what he could, and this time he was rewarded.

"There is good enough to live with me," said Don Ricardo stiffly, "my lady sister, the Dona Dolorez Eulalia Vitoria." He looked out across the chasm.

Cartaret caught his breath. There was an awkward pause. Then, glancing up, he saw, coming toward them along the terrace, the figure of a woman-servant that seemed startlingly familiar.

It was Chitta. She was bent, no doubt, on some household errand to her master, whose face was luckily turned away--luckily because, when she caught sight of Cartaret, her jaw dropped and her knees gave under her.

Cartaret had just time to knit his brows with the most forbidding scowl he could a.s.sume. The old woman clasped her hands in what was plainly a prayer to him to be silent concerning all knowledge of her and her mistress. A moment more, and Don Ricardo was giving her orders in the Basque tongue.

"Our servants," he said apologetically when she had gone, "are faithful, but stupid." His gray eyes peered at Cartaret searchingly.

"Very stupid, sir," he added. "For instance, you, sir, know something of our customs; you know that centuries-old tradition--the best of laws--makes it the worst of social crimes for a Basque to marry any save a Basque----"

He stopped short, holding Cartaret with his eyes. Cartaret nodded.

"Very well, sir," Ricardo continued: "one time a lady of our house--it was years upon years ago, when Wellington and the English were here--fell in love, or thought that she did, with a British officer.

For an Englishman, his degree was high, but had he been the English King it would have served him nothing among us. Knowing of course that the head of our house would never consent to such a marriage, this lady commanded her most loyal servant to a.s.sist in an elopement. Now, the Basque servant must obey her mistress, but also the Basque servant must protect the honor of the house that she has the privilege to serve. This one sought to do both things. She a.s.sisted in the elopement and brought the lady to the English camp. Then, thus having been faithful to one duty, she was faithful to the other: before the wedding, she killed both her mistress and herself." He turned quickly. "Sir, I have pressing duties in the valley, and you are too weary to ride with me: my poor house is at your disposal."

Cartaret leaned against the parapet and, when his host was out of earshot, whistled softly.

"What a delightful _raconteur_," he mused. "I wonder if he meant me to draw any special moral from that bit of family-history."

He waited until, a quarter of an hour later, he saw Don Ricardo and two servants ride across the drawbridge and wind their way toward the valley. He waited until the green forest engulfed them. What he was going to do might be questionable conduct in a guest, but there was no time to waste over nice points of etiquette. He was going to find Vitoria.

He started for the court-yard. His plan was to accost the first servant that he encountered and mention Chitta's name, but this trouble was saved him. In the shadowy gateway, he found Chitta crouching.

She glanced to right and left, saw that they were un.o.bserved, pa.s.sed beyond a narrow door that opened into the gate, and led Cartaret up a spiral stone staircase to the entrance of a circular room in one of the twin gate-towers. There she turned and left him alone with Vitoria.

In the center of that bare room, standing beside one of the bowmen's windows that commanded the approach to the castle, the Lady of the Rose awaited him. For an instant, he scarcely recognized her. She was gowned in a single-piece Basque dress of embroidered silk, closely fitted about her full lithe figure to below the hips, the skirt widening and hanging loosely about her slim ankles. A black silk scarf, in sharp contrast to the embroidery, was sewn to the dress and drawn tightly over the right shoulder, across the bust, and then draped beneath the left hip. But the glory of her blue-black hair was as he had first seen it in the twilight of his far-off studio; the creamy whiteness of her cheeks was just touched with pink, and her blue eyes, under curling lashes, seemed at first the frank eyes that he loved.

"Vitoria!" he cried.