The Car of Destiny
refused. So I accepted, while a way of benefitting myself and rewarding
her occurred to my mind.
“You see how it is with me.” I said, with a confidential air. “You have
been very generous. Will you be helpful too?”
“You may trust me,” she answered. “I love a love affair, especially if
there is difficulty. I shall have an acknowledged _novio_ myself soon, I
hope. He is a bull-fighter—only a beginner, but he will be great one day,
and though my father made a long face at first, now he shrugs his
shoulders; and when that is done, there is always hope. Her Majesty the
mother makes the long face, does she not?”
I nodded.
“She will shrug the shoulders by and by.”
“I doubt it. But meanwhile, I’ve written a letter. Will you try to give it
to the young lady?”
“Yes,” said Mariquita. “I will try my best. I think I can do it. Not
to-night, for she has gone to bed, and there would be no excuse to get
back to her room, since I must pass through Her Majesty’s. But to-morrow
morning I will take the ladies’ hot water, with oh, such an innocent face!
And I will take the letter too.”
“Thank you many times,” said I.
“The thing isn’t done yet.”
“It’s for your goodwill I thank you in advance. And this is for your
bull-fighter, as a present from his _novia_.”
I took out my scarf-pin. Her face flushed with pleasure, as it would have
flushed for no sum of money. She might have waived away a present for
herself, but she could not resist one for the _novio_, and I was thanked
far beyond the gift’s merit.
If she went to bed happy, so did I, for I believed that Monica would have
my letter in the morning; and if the wistfulness in her eyes meant some
new trouble in which I had a part, I hoped that the words I had written
might banish it.
XXIV
THE GOODWILL OF MARIQUITA
Nevertheless I could not sleep on my hard but clean pillows, for wondering
about that look of Monica’s, and its meaning; and whenever I shut my eyes,
hordes of red and yellow figures poured out of white houses upon white
roads, forming irritating, kaleidoscopic patterns on my tired retina.
Each hour that passed was cried by the watchman, far away, and then close
under my window; a fearsome cry like a groan of agony uttered by a madman
in a dying spasm.
I was glad when morning came; and after such a bath as two or three
miniature jugs of water afforded (the deer-eyed boy wondered in the name
of all the saints what I could do with so many), I threw off the
brain-clouds of a sleepless night.
Before long Monica would have my letter. She would know—if she could have
doubted—that if I had loved her at first, I worshipped her now. She would
know why we had not followed more closely yesterday; and why—unless
Carmona chose to accept our help again—we would go on before the grey car
to-day. She would know also that my most earnest hope was to take her
away, out of the reach of harm.
I was dressed, and had had my coffee and hard, fat roll of Spanish bread,
by half-past seven, as I was sure Ropes would be wanting to see me. I
would not have disturbed Dick, who slept in a room across the _patio_, but
I found him in the dining-room, wrestling with a glass of thick chocolate
and a finger-shaped sweet biscuit. “I’m trying to like Spanish customs,”
said he.
I laughed.
“Because, if I’m going to carry through that scheme of mine about motor
traffic, I may have to live on the spot, you see.”
“Oh!” said I. “And what about Colonel O’Donnel’s copper mines? Have you
thought of a means to persuade him it’s his duty to have them worked?”
“In a way, I have,” Dick answered dryly. “An indirect sort of way. What
about our gasoline? Heard anything about it?”
“No. I’m going to find Ropes.”
“Rather a sell for Carmona, if he did order our _bidons_ pricked, to feel
it’s his fault if we’re held up as long as he is.”
“There’s Ropes in the _patio_,” I said. “I’ll go and interview him.”
“What news?” I asked.
“Well, sir, I did what the landlord said last night, and had a try for
moto-naphtha—as they call it here—at the chemist’s.”
“Did they have any?”
“Oh yes, sir, they had some. As much as a pint apiece, in the two shops.
They wanted to sell it by the ounce.”
Dick and I laughed, though my mirth was not care-free. I had visions of
being stuck at this place until Ropes made a journey to Madrid and back,
Carmona’s car slipping away long before we were ready.
“I was afraid it was hopeless to look for petrol here,” I said, striving
for resignation, even though I saw Mariquita going upstairs with two
battered tins of hot water.
“Not yet, sir. A man who heard me asking for moto-naphtha at the
chemist’s, advised me to try the cemetery.”
“The cemetery? You misunderstood the word.”
“No, sir; it _was_ cemetery. And what’s more, he said the Mayor keeps it
there to kill lobsters.”
This statement, delivered somewhat nervously, was received with derision.
“The fellow was stuffing you,” said Dick.
“I don’t think so, sir.”
“Then he’s mad,” I insisted. “Fishing for lobsters with moto-naphtha in a
cemetery at Manzanares is a story Baron Munchausen would have thought
twice about before telling.”
“_Langostas_ does mean _langouste_—or lobsters, I suppose, sir?” asked
Ropes.
“Ye—es,” I answered thoughtfully. Then lightning flashed across the
darkness of my mind. “It means locusts as well,” said I. “They use petrol
to kill locusts, and for some reason best known to themselves keep it at
the cemetery. We’ll go, Ropes, and persuade them to sell us more than an
ounce.”
“Right, sir. At once?”
“In a moment,” said I.
Mariquita, empty-handed, was coming downstairs. I waylaid her, under that
portion of the balcony hidden from the window of Lady Vale-Avon’s room.
“Did you deliver the letter?” I asked.
“Yes, señor.”
“To the young lady herself?”
“To herself. But I must tell you what worries me, señor. As I was leaving
the outer room, I heard a sound like a cry of distress, from the inner
room. I looked back, and Her Majesty the mother had gone in. That is all I
know. I could do nothing, whatever had happened, and I felt it would be
well to escape before I could be questioned.”
“What do you think happened?”
“How can I tell, señor? Unless the terrible lady snatched your letter from
the angel.”
“At least, I hope the angel had had time to read it.”
“I do not know, señorito. There was not much time; but she might have been
quick; and if the letter was not long, there is still hope.”
This was poor comfort. All my joyous anticipations dashed, I tried to
think of some way of finding out whether Monica had read my letter, and
whether there were any way of smuggling another to her.
The note had been written in such haste, that I scarcely knew what I had
said. No name had been signed; nevertheless, if Lady Vale-Avon read what I
had written, she would say to herself, “It is not Cristóbal O’Donnel who
says these things, but a more dangerous man.” If she had the letter, she
could show it to Carmona; but, as I thought the matter over, I decided
that it was unlikely she would do this.
Spaniards, especially Spaniards with Moorish blood in their veins, do not
like to think girls they love capable of carrying on secret correspondence
with other men; and I imagined that Lady Vale-Avon was a woman to guess
this. Already Carmona knew that Lady Monica was interested in someone
else, or had a girlish fancy for him, which might or might not have been
frightened away. But his desire for her would not be whetted by the fact
that she was receiving letters from that someone else, perhaps sending
them to him; and it struck me that Lady Vale-Avon would conceal the
correspondence, rather than flaunt it in Carmona’s face. If I were right,
then I was as safe as before from the Duke’s jealousy; but, had Monica
read my letter?
On the alert as her mother would be now, I should find it more difficult
than ever to communicate with the girl. Yet I could not bear to leave
Manzanares in fear of a misunderstanding.
Nothing more could be done at the moment, however; and I hurried Ropes off
that we might finish our errand and get back by the time that Monica was
down.
It appeared that the man who had volunteered information about
moto-naphtha was waiting to act as guide. He was still at the chemist’s,
and from there led us to the Casa Consistorial. At the Casa Consistorial
were two policemen in the hall, warming themselves over a hole in the
ground, where glowed charcoal embers. But the Mayor had not arrived.
Without him nothing could be arranged. Besides, even if he were present
and willing to consent, the key of the cemetery was with the _cura_, who
might be anywhere.
Off we dashed to the _cura’s_ house, and just in time. Five minutes later,
and we might have had to wait hours for him. But there he was, a
delightful, white-haired old man, who would be charmed to open the
cemetery for our worships, since it was not to bury us; but he could make
no move in that direction without the honourable concurrence of the Mayor.
Back, then, we bustled to the Casa Consistorial, with the sensation of
shuttlecocks, played between battledores at cross purposes.
But at last the second battledore was ready to send us in the right
direction. The Mayor, a young man, who looked like a lawyer in tall hat
and frock-coat, was as polite as only a Spaniard can be. He put himself,
and his house, and Manzanares at our service. It was something like being
given the freedom of London; and what was more to the point than anything
else, he offered us as much moto-naphtha as the town possessed, at any
price we pleased to pay.
The question was, how much did the town possess; a single quart, or a
hundred gallons? The Mayor himself was not sure, so we rattled off in an
ancient “simón” to the cemetery to find out; and luckily were able to
carry away all we were likely to need for the next two days, while leaving
some for the locusts. But between the Casa Consistorial, the house of the
_cura_, the distant cemetery, and the drive back to our stable-garage, it
had taken us nearly three hours to achieve our end. Then there was a
little lingering with the car, to make sure that all was well and no more
tricks had been played; and the walk back to the _fonda_ exhausted the
last of my patience. I had not expected to be gone more than an hour, and
I had been gone three. Meanwhile, I said to myself, almost anything might
have happened. My idea had been to get back by the time that Monica was
dressed, and now, for all I could tell, she might have gone.
Dick laughed at this suggestion, for, said he, Carmona’s chauffeur was not
a worker of miracles except, perhaps, on other men’s cars; and he could
not have got his master’s in order and ready to start. His arguments were
reasonable; nevertheless, like many other plausible deductions, they were
wrong; for the first news we heard at the hotel was that the grey
automobile had left nearly an hour before. The chauffeur, it seemed, had
been up all night working, and had had assistance in the early morning at
a machine-shop. The injuries had been patched up, and the car was expected
to get on either to Andujar, or Linares if a certain bridge had been
finished.
After all, this was not as bad as if we had made no promise to the
Duchess. We were bound not to lie in wait for, or closely follow, her
son’s car; and had it not been for the “luck of the Dream-Book,” Carmona
and his party would have been far away last night when we arrived at
Manzanares. Had I not been tortured by doubts about the fate of my letter,
I might have been philosopher enough to say: “Patience, until Seville!”
As it was, patience was the last virtue I could cultivate; and for what