The Car of Destiny Part 34

The minutes pa.s.sed. The dancers talked in subdued tones which scarcely disturbed the nightingales. A breeze rustled the crisp leaves of the orange trees and myrtle hedges; far away the voice of the watchman told the hour of eleven, echoed by the chiming bells of a church clock; and the last stroke had not sounded when there was a burst of merry voices in a distant avenue. Carmona and his friends had come-late, of course-or there could have been no Andalucians among them; and suddenly, as if on a signal, the gardens pulsed with rose-coloured light. In the pink blaze I saw Monica, slender and fair as a lily, in a white dress sparkling with silver; but I had only time to see that she walked beside Carmona, when the rose flame died down and left the garden pure and peaceful under the moon.

For an instant the soft light seemed darkness, and I lost the white figure. When it sprang to my eyes again in a sharp emerald flash, while all the hidden fountains in the garden walks spouted jewels, others were grouped round it; only the gold crown of rippling hair shone out clear as a star for me among other women's dark coils and braids.

Old ebony chairs with crimson velvet cushions and the Carmona arms in heavy gilding, had been sent to the Alcazar from the Duke's house, for the entertainment. The party sat down, and the dancing began, to the _flamenco_ music of guitars and the clacking of castanets; the _fandango_, the _bolero_, the _malaguena_, the _chaquera vella_; all the cla.s.sical dances of old Spain, and each one a variant on the theme of love, the woman coy, coquettishly retreating; the man persuading or demanding, the woman yielding in pa.s.sionate abandonment at last.

In the midst of a _sevillana_ I came out from the shadows of the kiosk and walked without a sound of rattling pebble or cracking twig, along a path which the moon had not yet found.

The high backs of the ebony chairs were turned to me. I could not even see the heads of the people who sat in them; but I had watched them take their places, and I knew that Monica's chair was the outside one on the end, at the right.

Everyone was absorbed in watching the dance. As it approached its tempestuous climax of joy and love, I moved into the deep shadow of a magnolia tree, close to Monica-so close that, reaching out from behind the round trunk which screened me, I touched her hand.

With a start, she glanced up, expecting perhaps to find that the breeze had blown a rose-branch across her fingers. Instead, she saw my face; for I had taken off the wide-brimmed grey sombrero and bared my head to her.

For a second she looked straight into my eyes, as if she doubted that she saw aright. Then, an unbelievable thing happened. Her eyes grew cold as gla.s.s. Her lips tightened into a line which I had not dreamed their soft curves could take. Her youth and beauty froze under my gaze. With a haughty lifting of her brows, and an indescribable movement of her shoulder which could mean nothing but scornful indifference, she turned away as if impatient at having lost a gesture of the dancers.

Astounded, I stepped back; and so vast was the chasm of my amazement that I floundered in it bewildered, unable even to suffer.

Then came a pang of such pain and anger as I had never known-anger not against the girl, but against Carmona; and the knife which pierced me was dipped in the poison of jealously. My impulse was to leap out from the shadow and strangle him. My hands tingled for his neck, and through the drumming of the blood in my ears I could hear the crack his spine would make as I twisted it. For that instant I was a madman. Then, something that was myself conquered.

Horror of the savage thing just born in me overflowed in an icy flood that swept it, drowning, out of my soul. But never again, so long as I may live, shall I condemn a man who kills another in one blind moment of rage.

Even when the red glaze was gone from before my eyes, I could not trust myself to stand there, looking at Carmona as he smiled and patronized the dancers by clapping his hands. I turned away, not stopping until I had regained the kiosk.

There I sat down, elbows on knees, head in my hands, trying to a.n.a.lyse that look on Monica's face, trying to tell myself that I must have mis-read it-that such an expression as I imagined could not have been there for me.

Perhaps, as I suddenly appeared behind a veil of flickering moonlight and shadow she had not known who I was. She had mistaken me for some impertinent stranger, and rather than give an alarm, she had hoped that a frown might rid her of the intruder. Then, I had gone without giving her a second chance to recognize me.

After a few minutes of such reflections, I almost persuaded myself that I had been a fool and was wholly to blame for what I suffered. At least, I said, I owed it to her to make sure that the look had been for me, and the suspense must end to-night. I would know, even if I made her answer me under the eyes of Carmona and the others.

But a moment later I saw that I need not be driven to such extremes.

The first part of the dance was over; the Duke and his guests were walking through the gardens in the interval. They were coming my way-coming to the kiosk. As they advanced, I retreated into shadow. I let the group linger at the kiosk, admiring the beautiful _azulejos_; I let them move on; then, as Monica loitered purposely behind the others, drooping and evidently sad, I put myself in front of her.

"Monica," I said, "what has happened? You-"

The girl flung up her head, and though there was a glitter of tears in her eyes and her face was white under the moon, she stared defiance. "Don't speak to me," she said. "I never wish to see you again. I'm going to marry the Duke of Carmona."

XXVIII

LET YOUR HEART SPEAK

Men do not kill themselves for such things. Fools, or cowards, or children may; but not men who are worthy the name. Yet there was no joy of life left in me, as I went out of the Alcazar garden, having had my answer.

Love cannot die in an hour, and I loved Monica still, though I said that she was not the girl to whom I had dedicated my soul in worship.

She had let me follow her, only to say at last: "I never wish to see you again. I'm going to marry the Duke of Carmona."

After all, she had proved herself a docile daughter. She had seen what the house of a grandee of Spain can be like. She had seen the Blanca Laguna pearl. Poor child of eighteen years, brought up to know poverty and to loathe it; was I to let my love turn to hate because she was not an angel, but a woman like others?

A despairing pity and a sense of hopeless loss weighed upon my spirit with such heaviness as I had never known. Not only had I lost the girl I loved, but there was no such girl; she was a dream, and I had waked up. That was all; but it seemed the end of everything.

My errand in Spain was finished, or rather broken short. She did not want me any more. The sooner I took myself out of her life and let her forget what must now seem childish folly, the better. I might have known-she was so young; and she had warned me of disaster when she said, "Don't leave me alone."

I went to Olivero's flat and changed my clothes; then to the hotel where Ropes and the car were waiting. For the first time since we had come into Spain, I drove, "like a demon," Ropes' surprised face said, though his tongue was discreet; and the wild rush through the air was wine to thirsty lips.

At the Cortijo de Santa Rufina they were all sitting in the _patio_ in floods of moonlight, the great awning which gave shade by day, fully rolled back.

"You see," exclaimed Pilar, "we sat up for you. Well, how did it go off?"

I heard myself laughing. It did not feel a pleasant laugh, but I was glad to think that it sounded like any other. "Oh, it went off exactly as I might have expected," I said, knowing that it was useless to hide my humiliation, though I might hide my misery. "And consequently, my car and I will also go off, to-morrow. As for d.i.c.k, he must do as he pleases; but I advise him, now he's here, to stay for the _Semana Santa_."

"What do you mean?" asked Pilar, almost letting fall the guitar on which she had been playing. "Has-has Lady Monica promised to go with you-to-morrow?"

"Not at all," said I. "But what she's promised to another man makes it better that I should go. She's engaged to Carmona."

"I don't believe it," cried Pilar.

"I shouldn't, if anyone but herself had told me."

"She said it?"

"In exactly those words. She said too, that she didn't want to see me again."

"Oh-oh!" breathed Pilar. "Thank _Heaven_ for that. You frightened me horribly-just for a moment."

I stared. "And now-"

"Now I know there's some mistake-dreadful, but not too dreadful to clear up."

I laughed again, as bitterly as I felt this time. "Extraordinary idea!

Because she says she doesn't want to see me, there's a mistake-"

"Of course. Surely you aren't so cold-hearted, so disloyal, so-so _stupid_ as to believe her? But tell me instantly all about it-everything; every word; every look."

"Easily done," I said, "if it won't bore you all. There were very few of either; but what there were left nothing to the imagination."

"Imagination indeed!" exclaimed Pilar. "But go on."

So I went on, and she listened to the end without interruption, as did the two others, who were only men, and therefore had no comments to make upon such matters.

As I told the wretched story in as few and as bald words as possible, Pilar sat grave-eyed, tense-lipped as Portia in the Court of Justice before her turn to plead. When I finished she was silent for a moment, I thought because, after all, she found herself with nothing to say. But, when her father in his compa.s.sion would have begun some murmur of consolation, she broke out quickly, "I suppose she _is_ engaged to the Duke, or she wouldn't have said so."

"Not much doubt of that," I a.s.sented.