The Car of Destiny Part 31

But nothing was known of the Duke and his party at the hotel, although there was a rumour that an automobile had pa.s.sed through the town in the morning.

The Cherub, consulted, was of opinion that if Carmona's car had come, it must have remained.

"There'd be nowhere for them to stop afterwards short of Seville," he said, "unless Carmona, and that's near Seville. They must be lurking in Cordoba-perhaps at the Marques de Villa-blanca's, who's a friend of the Duke's. We shall come across our lovely little lady presently, if we get about in the town; in the Paseo del Gran Capitan, or the Patio de los Naranjos, or the cathedral, or by the ruins of the Alcazar."

"Besides, I thought you'd made up your mind not to worry till we got to Seville," said d.i.c.k.

"So I had," I answered. "But I have a feeling as if something had gone wrong."

"Any reason for the feeling-except the feeling itself?" asked d.i.c.k.

I shook my head, not caring to mention the letter that might have gone astray. "Nothing I can define."

"Then I guess it's all right, and you're developing nerves."

"I know _just_ how he feels," said Pilar, with a reproachful look at d.i.c.k, with whom she was at odds since the episode of the bull. "There was an expression in Lady Monica's eyes, wasn't there, at Manzanares, as if she were sad? Oh, I saw it; and they wouldn't let me get within whispering distance of her afterwards, or I should have found out what it meant. I had the idea that they were _particularly_ anxious to keep me away, and I wondered if there were any new reason. I'm not surprised that Don Ramon is worried. One can see that Senor Waring's never been in love!"

"Oh, haven't I?" exclaimed d.i.c.k; which, of course made matters worse; and to mend them, he went on blundering. "What do _you_ know about the symptoms?"

"Girls are born knowing things it takes men years to learn," said Pilar.

It did not allay my anxiety that she should have noticed what I had noticed. But I clung to the Cherub's a.s.surance, hoping, when we had set out on our explorations, to meet her, to see her face light up with the radiance I knew.

But there were no strangers save ourselves, and a few wandering Americans under the palms and orange trees of the _paseo_ dedicated to the memory of El Gran Capitan.

We wandered-Pilar keeping at my side, and leaving d.i.c.k to her father-from gate to gate outside the Mosque-Cathedral which once made Cordoba the Mecca of Europe; gazing up at the tremendous ma.s.s of honey-coloured masonry rising like a vast fortress from its b.u.t.tresses of stone; lingering under the bell-tower of the Puerta del Perdon because Pilar "felt as if something would happen there." But nothing did happen; and we went to face the blighting of renewed hopes in the Court of Oranges, whose melancholy charm and sensuous perfume was sad as the song of a nightingale when summer is dying.

She was not there; nor could we find her in the marble forest of the pillared cathedral, though, while d.i.c.k and Pilar made up their differences over the jewelled mosaics, I searched for her.

"I tell you, Ramon, there's some satisfaction in feeling that you're looking at the best things the world's got to show," said d.i.c.k, almost in my ear, "and there are lots of them in your country, especially in Cordoba, though I suppose the Moors would weep to see it now. But you don't seem to be enjoying them, in spite of risking such a lot to come where they are."

I didn't remind him that the risk I ran was for the one best thing in all the world, which was only temporarily in my country, and that my depression came because it was not at the moment visible. But Pilar did not need reminding, and in the way of sweet women, tried to "keep my mind occupied" by talking history and legend, confusing them deliciously, and defending her stories of beautiful Egilona and fair Florinda by saying that, anyhow, n.o.body cared whether they were true or not. Besides, what _was_ history, since dull people were continually discovering that none of the best bits had ever happened?

"I choose to believe in Florinda," she cried, "and all the other beautiful women who influenced kings, and made wars, and upset countries. Without them and their love-stories, history would be like faded tapestry without gold threads."

So d.i.c.k ceased to argue, and in silence we left the gem-like perfection of the third Mihrab, to wander once more through the wilderness of gleaming columns that were now like over-arching trees, now like falling fountains.

No dusky vista out of those many changing ones framed the figure I longed to see; and when we had left the cathedral and climbed to the gardens and towers where stood once the Alcazar of Gothic and Moorish glories, it was the same story of disappointment. Only the Americans we had seen in the _paseo_ were there, more interested than I in such fragments as they could catch of Pilar's tales. Dungeons where Theodofredo had been blinded, and Witica the wicked had paid for his crimes; vanished halls where Rodrigo reigned and loved before the dark day beside the Guadalete lost the crown for him and Christendom; what did they hold of interest since the garden of lilacs and roses which covered their ruins was empty of one Presence?

When we had seen everything, I left my friends in the hall of the hotel choosing curios from gla.s.s cases, and went out again in search of news concerning the automobile which had pa.s.sed in the morning.

Presumably it had attracted a crowd, yet no one seemed to know anything of it until at last, just as I was giving up hope, I met an old man who had seen a large grey motor-car at the railway station. A few minutes later, I had solved the mystery of the Lecomte's disappearance. It had arrived early; its pa.s.sengers had been conducted round Cordoba in the smallest possible time by Carmona; it had then been driven to the station; and with its late occupants had gone to Seville by the same train.

There might have been several motives for this move. The car might have been partially disabled, not having been properly prepared at Manzanares; or Carmona might have determined to thwart the destiny which so far had kept me near him. I was inclined to accept the latter theory, and it did not tend to promote my peace of mind.

I was glad to hear, however, that the train was not due at Seville until late that evening. If we made an early start next day, it was not likely that the situation could be much changed before I arrived, free of obligations to the d.u.c.h.ess.

Of course, said Pilar, before I had time to ask, they would be ready to start early, oh, very early. It would be beautiful to be in the country before the sun had drunk up the dew on the gra.s.s, and withered the roses of dawn in the clouds. There was no fear of cold now that we were in dear Andalucia. Yes! we would have coffee at six, and leave at half-past.

I should not have dared suggest such a trial of moral courage, but I accepted the sacrifice; so the roses of morning which Pilar loved still bloomed in the garden of the sky, and trailed their reflection in the Guadalquivir, as we rolled over the old bridge and past the white, Moorish hills.

A morning in Paradise could scarcely be more beautiful; and the pinky-purple blossoms of the _alamo_ shimmering in a rosy mist against dark cypress trees, or mingling with the white lace of hawthorn was a colour-symphony of Spring.

Dignified country houses no longer raised brown-tiled roofs from among groves of olives; but an illimitable sea of waving downs lay bathed in the amber light of Spain. Then, olive woods again, with a foam, of field-flowers spraying their gnarled feet, hedges of sweetbrier, tangled with tall, wild lilacs, and blossoming thorn. Beyond, high hills up which the Gloria stormed boldly, frightening the horses of a troop of laughing soldiers who rode without saddles; over stony roads, mere rough tracks drawn through meadows, where bulls grazed, and bellowed at the automobile; thus to a village which first showed itself like a white crown on a hilltop, and proved to be inhabited by women and children of surpa.s.sing beauty. Never were such eyes as those which looked from the faces in the quick-gathering crowd; eyes like black wells with fallen stars in their depths.

Peasant houses by the wayside had thatched roofs, grey and glistening as silver plush; and outside ovens like huge cups turned upside down. The fields were gay with flowers; the distance floated in waves of azure gauze which touched the sky.

On we swept, as though to find the joining place, but found only Ecija, the Town of the Seven Brigands, with its grand bridge and pearl-white Moorish mills, in the yellow, swift-running Genil.

Kings had been lodged behind those bra.s.s-nailed doors and wrought-iron balconies, the Cherub said; and malefactors famed in history and ballad had swung from that tall gallows which caught the eye before Ecija's eight church towers. There had been famous fighting, too, by the river bank; but now the place slept, dreaming of peace, and the whirr of the mill-wheels sounded as comforting as the "chum-chum" of a motor that runs by night.

So we flashed out of the Province of Cordoba into the Province of Seville, and tall, slender palms, rearing feathered heads among walnut trees and oaks, were signposts pointing south. It was early in April, but the air was the air of an English June, and I wondered to see men m.u.f.fled in long _capas_. "They do it to keep out the sun, as in the north to keep out the wind," explained Pilar; but she only laughed when d.i.c.k asked why they shaved their donkeys' backs, why they put red and yellow muzzles on their donkeys' mouths, why they always carried plaid "railway rugs" on their beasts' backs or their own, and why their trousers and leggings were made in one piece?

Beyond the olives, black clumps of umbrella pines flung ink-blots against the sky, and a purple carpet of budding heather was torn apart to let the road pa.s.s through. It was ideal motor-country, and d.i.c.k recalled with sneers the sixty horse-power man in Biarritz, who had feared the experiment.

"The way is to _do_ what you want to do, and find out as you go along whether it can be done or not," he soliloquized.

I wondered if he were thinking of another difficult road, not to be travelled by motors-a road where perhaps Don Cipriano already knew the way.

Larks sprang skyward from beds of wild flowers as we fled by, little fountains of music; tall cranes flew out of screening bushes beside bright streams; and blurring the distance before us, a mist of rain floated like a veil blown across the face of Spring.

In sight of Carmona's splendid walls and ruined castle, the rain caught us; and for Pilar's sake we made the car cosey by fastening down the front gla.s.s and filling in the s.p.a.ce with drawn canvas curtains.

After this, our fleeting glimpses of pine and palm and olive were dimmed as we bowled along a sandy road, yellow as beaten gold. Now and again a patch of purple blossom burning through the mist sang a loud, exultant note of spring and love; and pretty orange-pickers, in men's jackets and brown trousers, warbled of the same theme in that soft Andaluza which is beyond all other languages of pa.s.sion.

The colour, and the music, and the day went to my head. I knew that I was young, and I wanted my chance of happiness-wanted it so much that I felt I could kill a man who dared try to s.n.a.t.c.h it from me.

XXVI

IN THE PALACE OF THE KINGS

"Now I've something serious to say, Don Ramon," began the Cherub, when we had pa.s.sed the first pink-and-white house which marked the suburbs of Seville. "You mustn't go to an hotel here. It would be dangerous. You must be our guest; and Senor Waring, too. I feel now as if our little play were true, and you were my son; while as for Senor Waring, we might have known him for years, might we not, Pilarcita?"

"Of course. For my part, I'm ready to adopt him for a brother, too,"

replied Pilar.

I covered d.i.c.k's recoil at this blow by thanking the Cherub. He was more than kind, I said, but we couldn't think of-

"You will not think of disappointing us," broke in the dear brown fellow.

"Could you have imagined that our only reason is to keep you out of danger? No. We're not so unselfish. We want you. Partings will come soon enough. We must have you with us, under our roof, at our table, as long as we can. Now you understand, you will say 'yes.' "

"In my country," said d.i.c.k, as a broad hint to me, "when we tell people we want them to visit us, we mean it; and I guess Colonel O'Donnel and Miss O'Donnel are the same sort."