The Car of Destiny Part 22

I got up impatiently and went into the hall, where a boy in the livery of some shop handed me a small parcel. There was no address upon it, and I wondered if this were not some purchase of Pilar's, sent back to my care.

However, I decided to open it, and found nothing inside except a little steel paper-knife with the word _Toledo_ engraved on the black and gold handle.

I stared at the thing stupidly for a moment, as I fumbled for a _pourboire_ to give the messenger, when it occurred to me that he might explain the mystery. "Did a lady buy this?" I asked; "a young lady, with a tall senor also young, and another middle-aged?"

"A young lady? yes, sir. But she was with only one senor, and two senoras, both of an age."

"You saw them?"

"Yes, sir."

"Describe all four, and you shall have two pesetas instead of one."

"One senora was Spanish, brunette, fat, with dead eyes in a large, soft face of two chins. The other was tall and foreign, handsome, but with an air! I would not be her servant. The senor was distinguished. Dark, with a thin nose that turned down, like his moustache; a face of an old picture; one shoulder higher than the other."

"But the young lady?"

"Oh, sir, the senorita was a white and gold angel, made of a sunbeam! It was she who bought the knife, while the others chose a thing for the tall senora. She quickly gave it and the money to an attendant, with the address, saying it must be put into the gentleman's own hand."

I gave the boy five pesetas instead of two.

A paper-knife with the word _Toledo_ engraved upon it from Monica for me!

No message, only that! But was it not in itself a message-the only one she could find a way to send?

I went back to Don Cipriano. "I've just heard," said I, "that when Carmona starts, he intends to go to Toledo."

XX

THE MAGIC WORD

When the others came back, and the paper-knife was shown, all agreed with me that it could mean but one thing. The best of it was that to go to Toledo the grey car must pa.s.s the Conde de Roldan's place where my Gloria lay; and all we need do would be to await the moment when the Lecomte flashed by. Then we might give Carmona a surprise.

None of us doubted that he must guess the cause of his accident, as we guessed at ours; nevertheless, the blow he had inflicted was far more severe than our retaliation, and he doubtless hoped that, despite our revengeful scratch, he could slip out of Madrid leaving us _hors de combat_.

Don Cipriano dined with us that night, and went with the others to the Teatro Espanol, where the great Guerrero and her husband were acting. It was not thought well for me to appear, lest the Duke should be there, and say to some acquaintance, "You see the O'Donnel's. Is that the son who is in the army?"

When they returned, Pilar had news. Carmona, with the d.u.c.h.ess, Lady Vale-Avon, and Monica had all been at the theatre in a box.

"I knew that girl was beautiful," said Pilar, "but I didn't know how beautiful until to-night! With her pearly skin and golden hair among all the dark heads, she gleamed like a pearl amid carbuncles, and everyone was looking at her. You know how we admire fair beauties, and how we expect to adore the young queen when she comes? Well, if it had been Princess Ena herself, people could hardly have stared more, and the Duke was delighted.

He wants everything that's best for himself, and to have others appreciate it. He was so proud of Lady Monica between acts, and kept bending over her as if she belonged to him. I don't think he saw us; but I was glad you weren't there, or you would have been wild to fly at him."

"You make me wild to do that now," I said.

"Have a little patience, and you will steal her," said Pilar.

"If she would only let me! But she won't."

"Who knows what she will be ready to do if they press her? And after to-night, too! She seemed half afraid of him, as if she began to realize more and more what he is. Oh, if you weren't here I should want to do some desperate deed and s.n.a.t.c.h her away myself! He likes having her admired, while she's not yet his; but he has enough of the Moor in him to shut up a wife, so that no other man should see her beauty. And then presently he would tire, and be cruel."

"Don't let's talk of it," said I. "It's not going to happen."

Though it was so late before we slept, we were dressed at an unearthly hour-according to the Cherub-and driving out with the small luggage which accompanied us on the car, to Don Cipriano's place on the Toledo road.

Ropes had spent the night there, and the Gloria was ready. The luggage was got into place; and Don Cipriano and his mother-a fairy G.o.dmother of an old lady, with a white dome of hair under a priceless black lace mantilla-were determined to provide us with food and drink as if to withstand a siege.

There was a snow-cured ham from Trevelez, the most famed in Andalucia.

There was delicious home-made bread, _cuernos_, _molletes_, and _panecillos_; and olives large as grapes. There was white, curded cheese; quince jam or _carne de membrillo_; angels' hair, made of shredded melons with honey; _mazapan_, smelling of almonds, and shaped like figures of saints, serpents, and horses; oranges from Seville and Tarifa; fat figs dried on sticks; and, most wonderful of all, a wineskin of the country, so old that the taste of the skin was gone a generation ago, and plump with as much good red wine as would have filled six bottles.

"You will need these things," insisted the old lady, giving the Cherub a friendly pat on the arm, as she encircled Pilar's waist. "It is different on the road between Madrid and Seville, from those you have travelled. You will want to lunch out of doors, in the sunshine, for you won't find good things like these at any little venta. I know, for I have been with my son. I am a heroine, my friends say. We will pack everything well for you."

"And the wineskin you must hang on the side of the car," said Don Cipriano, all solicitude for our welfare, poor fellow, believing happily, as he did now, that neither d.i.c.k nor I was dangerous. "There's no cure for Spanish dust, except Spanish wine. Besides, you're going through wild country where automobiles are seldom seen. If peasants are inclined to throw stones, the sight of a good skin of wine should soften them. And what true man would risk damaging a wineskin?"

That fairy G.o.dmother, Dona Rosita, conceived a fancy for d.i.c.k, who flirted with her in his bad Spanish so outrageously that she was delighted. He made her feel young again, she said, and it was a shock to find that he was an American. She had not forgiven America for the Cuban war, which she had not understood in the least. "But _you_ are not wicked!" she exclaimed. "I thought all American men were wicked, and would do anything for money. _Ay de mi!_ I must again pardon Columbus for discovering your country, I suppose; though I have often said in these last years, how much better if he had left it alone. I used to stop in my carriage near the Cristobal Colon statue in the Prado, when the war was on, and laugh to watch the people throw things, because they were annoyed with him for the trouble he had brought. Yet now I see there's something to thank him for, after all." This last with a look at d.i.c.k which must have melted his American heart like water if she had been of the age of Pilarcita. But what would she have said had she known that-indirectly-Columbus had sent to Spain a rival for her adored Cipriano?

Ignorance being bliss, the delightful mother and son were a hostess and a host almost too hospitable.

As if the hampers stowed in the car were not enough, a tremendous breakfast on a table loaded with flowers was provided for us. But just as we sat down, at ten o'clock, a servant on duty as scout appeared, panting after a scamper across fields, to say that a motor had pa.s.sed. Our chauffeur sent word that it was _the_ motor; and was ready to start our car.

This was the signal for confusion, cries of regret, wishes for good luck, laughter, and exclamations. Pilar and the Cherub were persuaded to finish their cups of thick chocolate, flavoured with cinnamon, while d.i.c.k and I drank our strong coffee and left our _aguardiente_.

Off we went, in flowery Spanish speech kissing the senora's feet, while she kissed our hands; Don Cipriano leaped upon a horse to see us off, all his dogs about him; and ten minutes later our pneus were pressing the track in the white dust made by the Lecomte.

We soon lost sight of gay Madrid, with its domes and spires clear cut against the white mountains, to run through a green landscape of growing corn and grape, vineyards framed for our eyes with distant hills flaming in Spanish colours, red and gold. Colonel O'Donnel pointed out an isolated elevation which he said was the exact centre of Spain; and of course there was a convent on its top. Every other hill had a ruined watch-tower, brown against a sky of deeper, more thoughtful blue than Italy's radiant turquoise. Men we met rode upright as statues on n.o.ble Andaluz animals, grand as war-horses in mediaeval pictures; but some did not scorn to turn abruptly aside at sight and sound of our motor, to go cantering across fields to a prudent distance. Carters with nervous mules held striped rugs over the creatures' faces till we had pa.s.sed; donkeys brayed and hesitated whether to sit down or run away, but ended in doing neither; yet no man frowned.

d.i.c.k said that now, at last, he began to feel he was really in Spain, because we met the right sort of Spanish faces, the only kind he was ready to accept as Spanish. He had been satisfied with the strongly characteristic qualities of everything else (especially the balconies, the hall-mark of domestic architecture in Spain); the rich, oily cooking; the pillows, oh, the stony pillows! the manners of the people, and the costumes of Castile. But the features of the people hadn't been, till to-day, typical enough to please him. He had expected in the north mysterious looking Basques; then, something Gothic or Iberian, if not Moorish, with a touch of the Berber to give an extra aquiline curve to the nose. But not a bit of it! Noses were as blunt as in England, Ireland, or America, and might have been grown there. It was only this morning that we had flashed past a few picture-book Spanish features, and fierce, curled moustaches.

"Wait till you get farther south," murmured the Cherub, "you will see the handsome peasants. They put townspeople to shame."

"And mantillas-I want mantillas," said d.i.c.k. "I've only seen one so far, except in the distance at Vitoria; I expected every woman to wear one. Now you, senorita, owe it to your country."

Pilar laughed. "Fancy a mantilla in a motor-car. You haven't _seen_ me yet, senores-no, not even when I went to the play. When we're at Seville, why, then you'll be introduced to the Real Me. Look you, I have but one sole hat in this wide world, beyond this motoring thing I bargained for at Burgos. You've no idea what a hat-such a hat as a self-respecting senorita can put upon the head G.o.d made-costs in this land of Spain. Twice-three times what it would be elsewhere, so travelled women say, and to have a smart one is necessary a trip at least to Biarritz. As for Dona Rosita, she is old-fashioned, and always wears the mantilla; indeed, on her wedding tour to Paris she had to buy her first hat in Ma.r.s.eilles, she says; for thirty years ago, you could hardly find one in Spain. Now, most of the ladies in Madrid wear hats, except for the bull-fight; but in dear Seville, it's different. I shall no longer have a headache with the hatpins which pinch these hairs of mine. Santa Maria Purisima, you shall see what you shall see."

She spoke as if to me; but she glanced at d.i.c.k, who-though he had still to pose as the owner of the car-was growing fond of the tonneau, while Ropes drove. Woe betide Don Cipriano if he had seen that glance!

By and by we turned off the main road at Cetafe, and got caught by closed bars at a railway crossing.

"We shall probably be here an hour, and might as well lunch," said the Cherub resignedly; but when a humble-looking luggage train had crept in, it was so impressed with our air of superior importance that, to our surprise, it backed out rather than obstruct our honourable path; and the gates were wheeled back for us to pa.s.s in front of the engine's polite little nose.

It was a spin of but fifty miles from Madrid to the olive plantations (the first I'd seen in Spain) near Toledo; but the road surface was not of velvet; and we had often to slow down for animals who hated, because they did not understand, that most faithful and loyal of beasts, the automobile. Therefore it was close upon one o'clock when the n.o.ble old town rose in wild majesty before us on its granite, horseshoe hill, girdled by the dark gold bed of the Tagus.

Madrid seen from afar off had scarcely been impressive, but this Rome of Spain-though we did not approach it by way of the world-famous bridge-was grander than any picture had led me to believe.

We had seen nothing of the grey car yet, not even a cloud of dust, but we knew it must be here, and everyone of us looked forward to watching the face of the Duke when we should march into the dining-room of the best hotel, where by this time he and his party were probably about to lunch.