The Car of Destiny
may be nothing left, as the King’s to be here and there’s sure to be a
crowd. I’ll do my best to whisper to Lady Monica, or send her a note, or
speak with my eyes if no more.”
“You know how I depend on you,” I answered. “She may give you a letter, an
answer to one which I hope she got at Manzanares.”
“I’ll be ready for the lightest hint,” said Pilar. “If she has a note for
you, she’ll show it behind her fan. Then I’ll motion her to crumple it up
and throw it on the floor as she goes out. If you don’t appear in our
society, the Duke will think perhaps that after all he’s safe.”
“No. We mustn’t count on any such thing,” broke in her father. “If he
can’t get rid of you in one way, he’ll try another; and there’s an old
saying which is still true: anything can happen in Spain, especially in
the south. Carmona will be watching for you. You must be prepared for
that.”
“I shall be,” I said.
“We’ll all be,” Pilar finished. “Oh, there’s the old Roman aqueduct! Isn’t
it splendid; and strong as if it had been built yesterday instead of in
the days before the Goths. I love Seville—love every brick and stone of
it, from the ruins of the Moorish wall and the Torre del Oro, and the
glorious cathedral, to the old house in the Callo del Candilejo, where the
witch-woman looked out and saw King Don Pedro fighting his duel. I don’t
believe any other place could make up to me for Seville.”
By the side of the two-thousand-years-old-aqueduct ran a modern electric
tramway; and one of the graceful arches made by Roman hands had been
widened to let pass the railway line for Madrid. Farther on, Moorish
houses with lofty miradors and beautiful capped windows were tucked
between ugly new buildings, and across the shaded avenue of a green park
was flung an extraordinary, four-winged spiral staircase of iron. I
groaned at the monstrosity, saying that Pedro himself had never
perpetrated an act more cruel; and the Cherub excused it sadly, by saying
that it was convenient for the crowds to pass from one side of the street
to the other, as I should see if I stayed beyond the _Semana Santa_ for
the _feria_.
“Look at the Giralda, and you’ll forget the iron bridge,” said Pilar. My
eyes followed hers, and lit like winging birds upon a beautiful tower
soaring delicately against the sky. So light, so fragile in effect was it,
I felt that it might lean upon a cloud. In the golden light of afternoon
the little pillars of old marble, the carved lozenges of stone, the arches
of the horseshoe windows, the dainty carvings of the balconies, and all
the marvellous ornamentation that broke the square surfaces of the tower,
were rosy as if with reflections from a sunset sky. Its beauty was a
Moorish poem in brick-work, such as no other hands save Moorish hands have
ever made.
I looked back until I lost sight of the Giralda, except the glittering
figure of Faith on the top (strange symbol for a weather-vane), while
threading through tortuous streets, mere strips of pavement veiled with
blue shadow, and walled with secretive, flat-fronted houses, old and new,
pearly with fresh whitewash, or painted pale lemon, faded orange, or a
green ethereal as the tints of seaweed. Even at first sight the quaint
town was singularly lovable, in its mingling of simplicity and mystery,
and as Spanish in this mixture as in all things else.
The tall, straight palms, with their tufted heads like falling fountains,
clear against the sky, were Oriental, and seemed scarcely kin to the palms
of Italy and Southern France. Nor were the narrow streets, through which
we pounded over cobbles, like the narrow streets of Italian towns. They
were Spanish; inexplicably but wholly Spanish, although Dick was not sure
they did not recall bits of Venice, “just as you turn away from St.
Mark’s.”
It was odd that shops so small could be so gay and attractive as these
with their rows of painted fans, their draped mantillas, their bright
sashes, foolish little tambourines, castanets tied with rosettes of ribbon
in Spanish colours; their curious and vivid antique jewelry; their
_sombreros cordobeses_ displayed in the same windows with silk hats from
Bond Street; their flaming flowers, Moorish pottery, old lace, and
cabinets of inlaid ebony and silver. And I knew that I should learn to
love the sounds of Seville better than the sounds of London or other
cities I had seen.
Haunting sounds they were, these noises of a closely peopled old town,
characteristic as those of Naples, not so strident as in Madrid; above
all, the sound of bells, ringing, booming, chiming, so continuously that
soon they would affect the senses like a heavy perfume always present. One
would cease to hear them, and be startled only if their clamouring tongues
were silenced.
In the streets, where the processions of _Semana Santa_ would pass,
already hundreds of rush-bottomed chairs were ranged in front of houses
and shops, piled in confusion, which would be reduced to order for
to-morrow, Palm Sunday. Beyond, in the Plaza de la Constitución—scene in
old days of the bull-fight and _auto-da-fé_,—many men were busy putting
the last touches on the crimson velvet and gold draperies of the royal
box, pounding barriers into place in the tribune in front of the
silver-like chasing of the Casa del Ayuntamiento’s Plateresque façade, or
arranging row after row of chairs in the open space opposite, leaving an
aisle for the procession to pass between.
“Now there is something to do before we drive home to the Cortijo de Santa
Rufina,” said the Cherub. “I must see about getting a box in the tribune
for the week; I must find out whether Carmona did come in by train last
night. Don Ramón hasn’t suggested this plan, but I think he would not
dislike it.”
“I meant to drop out of the car, to see what I could learn myself, and
join you afterwards at home,” I said. “But you can get hold of things
better than I, a stranger, can.”
“You must remain a stranger,” he supplemented my words. “If your chauffeur
will stop at the top of this narrow street, I’ll walk down it a few doors
to my club, and ask for the latest news. Carmona doesn’t honour his house
in Seville too often with his presence, though his mother is here every
season, and his arrival will be the talk of the club. I can take steps
too, about a box for the show. I won’t keep you long; but you’d better
wait at the Café Perla. Pilar can’t go there without me. Oh, you may
smile; but remember we’re in Spain. She must wait at the house of a
friend.”
The Cherub’s idea of a “little while” and a “long while” were always
rather vague, and apt to dovetail confusingly one into another; but
knowing what it was his aim to accomplish, I did not grudge the fifty
minutes before his ample form and smiling face appeared in the doorway of
the café.
“It’s all right,” were his first words. “I felt my luck wouldn’t desert
me. Who do you suppose”—and he turned to Pilar, who had come on with
him—“was the first man I ran across? No other than Don Esteban Villaroya.”
Pilar looked a little frightened. “But he’s a friend of the Duke’s. Won’t
that make it awkward?”
“No; all the better. I told him Cristóbal and my daughter and I had
motored from Burgos with an American friend, an important writer for the
papers, who was going to pay us a visit. Not an untrue word to trouble my
confessor with. Don Esteban may or may not mention our meeting to Carmona
when he dines with him this evening.”
“Dines with him? Oh, I hope that won’t make mischief.”
“It won’t. Carmona arrived late last night, with his mother and guests. It
seems preparations have been going on in the house for the past fortnight;
and the first thing Carmona and his mother did was to send out half a
dozen invitations for dinner this evening. Afterwards, he managed,
probably through royal influence, to get permission from the Governor to
take the party into the Alcázar by moonlight, and he’s going to have
coloured illuminations, music, and Spanish dances given by professionals
in the costumes of different provinces. A grand idea, Don Esteban thinks.”
“But why is he doing it?” asked Pilar, thoughtfully. “María purísima! It
isn’t as if he were an impulsive or hospitable man, fond of getting up
impromptu entertainments. This is done in a hurry. What can be his object?
for he always has an object.”
“To amuse Lady Monica, who’s not pleased with him so far,” explained the
Cherub. “And as he’s a good Catholic, at least in appearance, to-night or
the night after will be his last chance to entertain till _Semana Santa_
is over.”
“Somehow, I don’t feel that’s reason enough,” said Pilar, looking so
troubled that I felt new stirrings of anxiety, and must have shown it; for
Pilar exclaimed that she was a “little beast” to worry me.
“You haven’t worried me,” I protested. “Still, I think I’ll go to that
entertainment at the Alcázar.”
Pilar and her father stared. “I see what you mean,” said the girl. “You
hope to walk in and meet Lady Monica. But you can’t, because the Alcázar’s
closed to the public after sunset. It will only be open for the Duke as a
favour, because he’s rich and important, and care will be taken that no
outsider slips in.”
“If there should be one more guitarist than he hired, do you think it
would be noticed?” I asked, smiling.
Pilar clapped her hands. “You’re a true lover, Don Ramón,” she exclaimed.
“_Ay de mi!_ Nobody will ever love a little dark thing like myself, as
Lady Monica is loved. I must be satisfied with the affections of my
relations, and a few others, I suppose.” Great eyes lifted sadly
ceiling-ward as she spoke, then cast down with distracting play of long
curled lashes. Spanish after all to her finger-tips, this María del Pilar
Inés, despite her Irish quickness. Poor Dick!
“You believe I could manage it, then?”
“I believe you _will_. Señor Waring has told me about the masked ball, and
how you played Romeo to somebody’s Juliet.”
“The difficulty will be to get hold of the _impresario_.”
Pilar looked at her watch. “They’ll know at the Alcázar who’s been
engaged. There’s an hour and a half yet before closing time.”
“What if you and I take a stroll through?” suggested Dick.
“We’ll all take a stroll through,” said Pilar, “and papa shall find out.
You know, he can always make everybody tell him anything in five minutes.
Even Cristóbal and I have never been able to keep a secret from him. If
I’d planned to elope, he would only have to whisper and smile, for me to
tell all, even if it meant my going into a convent directly after.”
“Yes, we must go to the Alcázar now, or it will be too late,” said the
Cherub, with an indulgent twinkle at his spoiled daughter.
The car took us to the gate of the Alcázar, a gate of that unsuggestive
Moorish simplicity which purposely hid all splendours of decoration from
any save favoured eyes. The guardian knew and evidently respected Colonel
O’Donnel; but with apologies which comprehended the whole party, he
regretted that he could not let us in. The King was to arrive in a few
days, returning from his yachting trip to the Canaries, and would live in
the Alcázar which was being got ready for him. From now until the day
after his departure, the Alcázar was to be closed to the public.
This was just, and as it should be, admitted the Cherub; but we were not
the public. We were special ones, even as special as the Duke of Carmona
who would entertain his friends there that evening. Surely the guardian
must know that the O’Donnel family was on terms of friendship with the
Governor of the Alcázar, who would suffer severe pains of the heart if he
heard that such visitors had been turned away. Thus the good Cherub
continued to whisper. And whether or no coin changed hands I cannot tell;