The Lighted Match Part 11

She placed the image before her and rested her chin on one hand, gazing at its grotesque and ancient visage.

Her eyes slowly filled with tears. Again she dropped her face on her arms and the tears overflowed.

Benton and Bristow had been sitting without speech as their motor threaded its way through the traffic along Fourteenth Street, and it was not until the chauffeur had turned north on Fifth Avenue that either spoke. Then Benton roused himself out of seeming lethargy to inquire with suddenness: "Do you remember the bull-fight we saw in Seville?"

His companion looked up, suppressing his surprise at a question so irrelevant.

"You mean the Easter Sunday performance," he asked, "when that negligent _banderillero_ was gored?"

"Just so," a.s.sented Benton. "Do you remember the chap we met afterwards at one of the cafes? He was being feted and flattered for the brilliancy of his work in the ring. His name was Blanco."

"Sure I remember him." Van talked glibly, pleased that the conversation had turned into channels so impersonal. "He was a fine-looking chap with the grace of a Velasquez dancing-girl and the nerve of a bull-terrier.

I remember he was more like a grandee than a _toreador_. We had him dine with us--hard bread--black olives--fish--bad wine--all sorts of native truck. For the rest of our stay in Seville he was our inseparable companion. Do you remember how the street gamins pointed us out? Why, it was like walking down Broadway with your arm linked in that of Jim Jeffries!"

He paused, somewhat disconcerted by his companion's steady gaze; then, taking a fresh start, he went on, talking fast.

"Besides sticking bulls, he could discuss several topics in several languages. I recall that he had been educated for the Church. If he hadn't felt the lure of the strenuous life, he might have been celebrating Ma.s.s instead of playing guide for us. In the end he'd have won a cardinal's hat."

The fixity of the other's stare at last chilled and quelled his chatter to an embarra.s.sed silence. He realized that the object of his mild subterfuge was transparent.

"I'm after his address--not his biography," suggested Benton coolly.

"His name was Manuel Blanco, wasn't it?"

"Why, yes, I believe it was. What do you want with him?"

"Never mind that," returned his friend. "Do you happen to know where he lived? I seem to recall that you promised to write him frequent letters."

"By Jove, so I did," acknowledged Van with humility. "I must get busy.

He is a good sort. His address--" He paused to search through his pocket-book for a small tablet dedicated to names and numbers, then added: "His address is _Numero 18, Calle Isaac Peral_, Cadiz."

Benton was scribbling the direction on the back of an envelope.

"You needn't grow penitent and start a belated correspondence," he suggested. "I am going to write him myself--and I'm going to visit him."

CHAPTER IX

THE TOREADOR APPEARS

Slowly, with a gesture almost subconscious, Benton slipped an unopened envelope from his breast pocket; turned it over; looked at it and slipped it back, still unopened. Then, leaning heavily on his elbow, he gazed off, frowning, over the rail of the yacht's forward deck.

The waters that lap the quays and wharves of Old Cadiz, green as jade and quiet as farm-yard pools, were darkening into inkiness toward sh.o.r.e.

White walls that had been like ivory were turning into ashy gray behind the _Bateria San Carlos_ and the pillars of the _Entrada_. The molten sun was sinking into a rich orange sky beyond the Moorish dome and Christian towers of the cathedral.

Shafts of red and green wavered and quaked in the black dock waters.

Between the hulks of cork- and salt-freighters, the steam yacht _Isis_ slipped with as graceful a motion as that of the gulls. Then when the anchor chains ran gratingly out, Benton turned on his heel and went to his cabin.

Behind a bolted door he dropped into a chair and sat motionless. Finally the right hand wandered mechanically to his breast pocket and brought out the envelope. He read for the thousandth time the endors.e.m.e.nt in the corner.

"Not to be opened until the evening of March 5th," and under that, "I love you."

There was another envelope; an outer one much rubbed from the pocket. It was directed in her hand and the blurred postmark bore a date in February. He could have described every mark upon the enclosing cover with the precision of a careful detective. When his impatient fingers had first torn off the end, only to be confronted by the order: "Not to be opened until the evening of March 5th," he had fallen back on studying outward marks and indications. In the first place, it had been posted from Puntal, and instead of the familiar violet stamp of Maritzburg, with which her other letters had been franked during the two months past, this stamp was pink, and its medallion bore the profile of Karyl.

That she had left Maritzburg, and that she had written him a message to be sealed for a month, meant that the date of March 5th had significance. That she was in Galavia meant that the significance was--he winced.

On the calendar of a bronze desk-set, the first four days of March were already cancelled. Now, taking up a blue pencil, he crossed off the number five. After that he looked at his watch. It wanted one minute of six. He held the timepiece before him while the second-hand ticked its way once around its circle, then with feverish impatience he tore the end from the envelope.

Benton's face paled a little as he drew out the many pages covered with a woman's handwriting, but there was no one to see that or to notice the tremor of his fingers.

For a moment he held the pages off, seeing only the "Dearest" at the top, and the wild way the pen had raced, forming almost shapeless characters.

"Dearest," she said in part, "I write now because I must turn to someone--because my heart must speak or break. All day I must smile as befits royalty, and act as befits one whose part is written for her.

Unless there be an outlet, there must be madness. I have enclosed this envelope in another and enjoined you not to read it until March 5th.

Then it will be too late for you to come to me. If you came to-night, you would find me hurrying out to meet you and to surrender. Duty would so gladly lay down its arms to Love, dear, and desert the fight.

"To-night I have slipped away from the uniforms, the tawdry mockery of a puppet court, to find the pitiful comfort of rehearsing my heart-ache to you, who own my heart. In my life here every hour is mapped, and I seem to move from cell to cell. So many obsequious jailers who call themselves courtiers stand about and seem to watch me, that I feel as if I had to ask permission to draw my breath. Out in the narrow streets of this little picture town, I see dark-skinned, bare-footed girls. Some of them carry skins of wine on their heads. All of them are poor. They also are gloriously free. As they pa.s.s the palace, they look up enviously, and I, from the inside, look out enviously. I know how Richard of the Lion Heart felt when he was a prisoner in France, only I have not the comfort of a Lion Heart, and it is not written in the book of things that you shall pa.s.s outside and hear my harp--and rescue me.... One little taste of liberty I give myself. It caused a terrible battle at first, but I was stubborn and told them that if I was going to be Queen I was going to do just what I wanted, and that if they didn't like it, they could get some other girl to be Queen, so of course they let me....

There is an old half-forgotten roadway walled in on both sides that runs through the town from this horrible palace to the woods upon the mountain. There is some sort of foolish legend that in the old days the Kings used to go by this protected road to a high point called Look-out Rock, and stand there where they could see pretty much all of this miserable little Kingdom and a great deal of the Mediterranean besides.

No one uses it now except me; but I do as often as I can steal away. I dress in old clothes and take the little Inca G.o.d with me and no one knows us. We slip off among the bowlders and pine trees where the view is wonderful, and as his G.o.dship presides on a moss-covered rock and I sit on the carpet of pine needles, he gives me advice. Somewhere in these woods crowds of children live. They are very shy, and for a long time looked at me wonderingly from big liquid eyes, but now I have made friends with them and they come and sit around me in a circle and make me tell them fairy stories....

"Once, dear, I was strong enough to say 'no' to you. Twice I could not be."

The reader paused and scowled at the wall with set jaws.

"But when you read this, almost three thousand miles away, there will be only a few days between me and (it is hard to say it) the marriage and the coronation. He is to be crowned on the same day that we are married.

Then I suppose I can't even write what is in my heart."

Benton rose and paced the narrow confines of the cabin. Suddenly he halted. "Even under sealed orders," he mused slowly, "one may dispose of three thousand miles. They, at least, are behind." A countenance somewhat drawn schooled its features into normal expressionlessness, as a few moments afterward he rose to open the door in response to a rapping outside.

As the door swung in a smile came to Benton's face: the first it had worn since that night when he had taken leave of Hope.

"You, Blanco!" he exclaimed. "Why, _hombre_, the anchor is scarce down.

You are prompt!"

The physically superb man who stood at the threshold smiled. The gleam of perfect teeth accentuated the swarthy olive of his face and the crisp jet of his hair. His brown eyes twinkled good-humoredly. Jaw, neck and broad shoulders declared strength, while the slenderness of waist and thigh hinted of grace--a hint that every movement vindicated. It was the grace of the bull-fighter, to whom awkwardness would mean death.

"I had your letter. It was correctly directed--Manuel Blanco, _Calle Isaac Peral_." The Spaniard smiled delightedly. "When one is once more to see an old friend, one does not delay. How am I? Ah, it is good of the _Senor_ to ask. I do well. I have retired from the _Plaza de Toros_.

I busy myself with guiding parties of _touristos_ here and abroad--and in the collection and sale of antiques. But this time, what is your enterprise or pleasure, _Senor_? What do you in Spain?"

"My business in Spain," replied Benton slowly, "is to get out of Spain.

After that I don't know. Will you go and take chances of anything that might befall? I sent for you to ask you whether you have leisure to accompany me on an enterprise which may involve danger. It's only fair to warn you."

Blanco laughed. "Who reads _manana_?" he demanded, seating himself on the edge of the table, and busying his fingers with the deft rolling of a cigarette. "The _toreador_ does not question the Prophets. I am at your disposition. But the streets of Cadiz await us. Let us talk of it all over the _table d'hote_."