The Car of Destiny Part 19

"Is it long since you saw each other?" asked Carmona, sallow and red by turns.

"About two years only, Senor Duque," replied his ex-servant, expressionless as before, and quietly respectful to all. "I could not forget the date, for the Senor Colonel and the senorita, as well as the senorito himself, were always very good to me."

The Duke was silenced. The test invented by himself had failed. Calmenare accepted me as Cristobal O'Donnel; he was obliged to accept me too-at least for the present.

"Shall we get out of this place?" he said to Lady Vale-Avon.

She swept her daughter with her; but Monica had a backward look for me, sparkling now with malice for Carmona, radiant with relief for Casa Triana.

We said good-bye to Calmenare in the Duke's presence; and I would have pressed a gold piece into his hand for "opening my prison door," but he would not have it. Afterwards, while we followed the grey car on the downhill road to Madrid, Pilar told the whole story with dramatic effect to the Cherub.

"My one hope was in Rafael," she said. "I was good to him, you remember, when he was ill. And he and I had a great sympathy over Corcito, the dear grey bull. I prayed he'd never forgiven the Duke for that crime, and that he'd still be grateful to me. Well, I looked Rafael straight in the eyes when I said, 'My brother Cristobal is in that place, shut up by the Duke, who has broken the spring.' With all my soul I willed him to understand, and he did. 'If the senorita chooses to have a strange gentleman for her brother, he is her brother for me,' is what he said to himself; no more!

But what if he _hadn't?_"

"That's where I should have come in," remarked d.i.c.k.

"What would you have done?" asked Pilar, breathless.

"I don't know," said d.i.c.k. "I only know I should have _done_ it; and that if I had, maybe Carmona wouldn't have been feeling as well as he feels now."

XVII

LIKE A THIEF IN THE NIGHT

No longer did the Duke desire our company. He had played his little comedy of good-fellowship, and it was over, though it had not ended according to his hopes. The grey car did its forty-horse best to outdistance us on the way to Madrid, but the road-so good that perhaps we lost nothing in the detour to the Escurial-distributed its favours evenly. We kept close on the Lecomte's flying heels until one of our four cylinders went to sleep, and Ropes had to get down and wake it up by testing the ignition.

Some fellow-motorists would have turned to offer help, but the Lecomte was ever a Levite where we were concerned; and when we were ready to go on, the grey car was not even a speck in the distance. Luckily, however, there was little or no doubt where its occupants would put up.

Though the Madrid house of the Carmonas had been burned down ten years ago (since when the d.u.c.h.ess had made her home at the old palace in Seville), there was scarcely a Continental paper which had not described the splendours of the Duke's apartment in one of the finest modern flat-houses of Madrid. Naturally, he would entertain his mother and guests there, so that it would be difficult to slip away with them unknown to us.

The thing I did not know was, how long he meant to stay in the capital; but as he must show Seville in Holy Week, and later perhaps other places in the south of Spain, to Lady Vale-Avon and Monica before their return to Madrid for the Royal Wedding, it was almost certain that he would go on in a couple of days.

The O'Donnels recommended to us the Hotel Ingles, the best Spanish hotel in Madrid, as well as the most amusing, and it was with a heart comparatively light that I looked forward to a first sight of my country's capital. How would it compare with Paris, with Vienna, with London? What adventures awaited me there? What was to be the next pa.s.s in this queer duel with Carmona?

But I need not have searched for comparisons. As we rushed into Madrid without threading through any suburbs,-since suburbs the city has none,-I discovered that it bore no resemblance to any other place.

We flashed from open country to a shady park, set about with buvettes and beer gardens; ran through a ma.s.sive gateway, and were in the heart of Madrid. Electric trams whizzed confusingly round us, and far above the hubbub of such traffic loomed proudly a hill crowned with an enormous palace. There was no need to ask if it were the royal palace, for it was essentially Royal, a house worthy of a king.

My father had fought to put Don Carlos there-Don Carlos, far away now in Venice; but with all my admiration for his brave son Don Jaime, my sympathies flowed loyally towards the young dweller on those heights.

We swept under and round the palace hill, as Colonel O'Donnel directed. In spite of his instructions, however, d.i.c.k lost the way twice, plunging into wrong turnings; but the second time he did this it seemed that San Cristobal-whose medal now adorned our Gloria and shaped our destinies-must have twisted the steering-wheel. There, before the door of an official building guarded by sentries, panted the grey car of Carmona; and among its pa.s.sengers Carmona alone was absent.

"That's the Ministry of War," said the Cherub, and with a quick thought I asked d.i.c.k to slow down. Taking advantage of her son's late cordiality, I spoke to the d.u.c.h.ess.

"We thought we had lost you," said I airily. "I hope nothing's wrong, that you stop here?"

"Not in the least, thank you," coldly replied the d.u.c.h.ess.

But Monica spoke up bravely. "The Duke didn't tell us why he wanted to go in. He only said he wouldn't keep us many minutes. Senorita O'Donnel, shall you be in Madrid long?"

"Only a few days," said Pilar. "And you?"

"We shall be here again at the time of the wedding," Monica answered quickly; "so I believe the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess will-"

"It is undecided," Lady Vale-Avon cut in before the girl could make us a present of Carmona's plans. "We may take some excursions. As there's a fine road to Barcelona, we may go there and to Montserrat; and the Duke has said something about Bilbao-"

"But, Mother, surely we're going to Seville for Holy Week!" cried Monica.

"There's no reason why we should arrive before Maundy Thursday," replied Lady Vale-Avon, hiding annoyance. "But isn't that the Duke coming out? I hope he won't be long. It's windy here, and you have a cold coming on, my dear d.u.c.h.ess."

We were dismissed; and raising our hats again we drove on, Pilar waving a small, encouraging hand to Monica. "They won't do any of those things,"

said the Spanish girl. "Something tells me they mean to start for Seville as soon as they can."

"Something tells me so too," said I. "And something tells me that Carmona's errand at the Ministry of War is to find out whether Lieutenant Cristobal O'Donnel y Alvarez is really away from Burgos on leave."

"That's what I was thinking," murmured the Cherub. "But the thought will not bring a grey hair. Cristobal _is_ on leave; and he told his brother officers that he expected to go with his family to Seville. It was at the last minute that his plans were changed. No one was taken into his confidence; and it will be very negligent of San Cristobal to let him meet in Biarritz any common acquaintance of his and Carmona's."

"I'm putting my faith in San Cristobal," said I. "But as he has a good deal to attend to, the less I show myself in Madrid, where my adopted brother must be known, the better."

"He hasn't been as often here as Pilar and I," said the Cherub, "so he knows few people. Still, Cristobal's uniform should now be put away, and Cristobal should wear civilian clothes."

"He certainly will," I answered, laughing. And Colonel O'Donnel gave himself up to directing d.i.c.k which way to go, as we were in the most crowded centre now, close to the Puerta del Sol.

This big, open s.p.a.ce, shaped like a parallelogram, walled by hotels, Government buildings, and shops, struck me as a Spanish combination of Piccadilly Circus and the Mansion House, thrown into one. Ten busy streets poured their traffic into the place; intricate lines of tramways converged there. The pavements were crowded with loungers who had the air of never doing anything but lounge, and wait for excitements. There was much coming and going of leisurely pedestrians, talking and laughing, all cla.s.ses mingling together; men in silk hats on the way to their clubs chatting with men in _capas_ and grey sombreros, who belonged to very different clubs; smart officers in uniform shoulder to shoulder with bull-fighters whose little twisted pigtails of black hair appeared under their tilted hats; ragged but handsome beggars thinking themselves as good, if not as fortunate, as their brothers in broadcloth; merry boys shouting the evening papers, black-eyed women and men selling cheap but colourful jewelry, post-cards, toys, and marvellous sweets. It was as gay a scene as could be found in any capital, and it seemed to me that this absolute democracy was after all the true note of modern Spain. Whatever else we may be, we never have been, never will be a nation of sn.o.bs, we Spaniards whose favourite saint is the peasant Isidro.

Steering cautiously through the throng which scarcely troubled itself to move before us, we took one of the main arteries leading out from the Puerta del Sol (where no sign of a gate was to be seen), and turned into the deep blue shadows of the Calle Echegaray to our hotel.

Already I had discovered that it is not the habit of Spanish landlords to descend from the important first floor to the unimportant ground floor and welcome their guests. They are glad to have you come if you choose, but they do not care if you stop away, for there are plenty of others; and whether you are cousin to the King of England or an American millionaire, or a Spanish commercial traveller, very timid and just starting in business, you will be given the same reception, unless you put on "proud airs," when you will be shown that you had better go elsewhere. But with an old friend, all is different; everyone welcomed the Cherub and the senorita; for their sakes everyone welcomed d.i.c.k and me. I was vaguely introduced as a relative-no name given; no name, in the flurry of greeting, asked; for Spain is not like France or Germany, where the first thing to do is to write down all particulars about yourself on a piece of paper.

Ropes drove the car off to a garage, and we were shown to rooms which made us realize that we had left the provinces behind and come into the capital.

"Thank goodness I shall have a pillow to sleep on to-night," said d.i.c.k, "instead of doing the carved-knight-on-a-marble-tomb act. I looked particularly at the two neat, rounded blocks those chaps in Burgos Cathedral had to rest their heads on, and the alleged pillows on my bed were an exact copy, hardness and all."

"I like them hard," said I.

"That's right! Stand up for Spanish inst.i.tutions."

"There's one anyhow I don't think you'd run down," I remarked.

"Which one?"

"Spanish girls."