The Car of Destiny
through torture until death, if these days were as the old.
At half-past nine Ropes was ready to spin me back into Seville. We arrived
earlier than need be; and having made an appointment to meet at a quiet
hotel, where Ropes would await me from half-past eleven till half-past
twelve, I decided to walk past Carmona’s house and reconnoitre.
I knew where to find it, in the Calle de las Dueñas; but if I had hoped
for a tell-tale glimpse within, as in a London or Parisian mansion, I was
disappointed. Once a Moorish palace, it showed a closed, secretive front
to the narrow street. But I knew, for I had read, that within there were
six courtyards, ninety marble pillars, half a dozen fountains, a garden of
orange and magnolia trees, with myrtle hedges clipped to represent the
ducal arms; that there were vast treasures of statuary, pictures by
Velasquez, Murillo, and Alonso Cano; gold-inlaid plate armour; tapestry
from the Netherlands not to be surpassed at the Royal Palace at Madrid.
I knew that these splendours would loom large in the eyes of Lady
Vale-Avon, and might count for something even with Monica, who confessed
to a love of all things beautiful. I thought of the famous Carmona jewels,
which would belong to the wife of the Duke, while she lived, as they had
belonged to generations of Duchesses. Above all, I thought of the
incomparable Blanca Laguna pearl and its glistening maids of honour,
which, by this time perhaps, had been shown to Monica. There were few
girls in Spain, or in the world, I remembered hearing my mother say, who
could resist that pearl as a bride. And now it was offered to Monica, a
penniless girl of eighteen, whose beauty formed her sole dowry.
There, behind the cold reserve of those white walls with the shut,
brass-studded doors and barred windows, she was being fêted by the Duke,
dining on gold plate, in a tapestried room fragrant with orange flowers. I
could see the pictures. I could see the look in Carmona’s eyes as they
turned to her, saying, “all this is yours if you will have it.” And
Carmona’s eyes were handsome eyes; I had to admit that, in justice.
Would she hold true to me—true to a man with no palaces, no lands, no
priceless pearls, and only half as many hundreds a year as her other lover
had thousands? Would she be able to resist her mother, now that mother had
seen with her own eyes how much there was to fight for and to win?
The question would come. But with it came a vision of Monica herself, pure
and sweet as beautiful, loyal and loving as she was lovely. And I said to
myself, “Yes, she will be true.”
It was with the clear ringing of these words in my mind that I turned my
back upon the house of Carmona.
Once I had passed into the Alcázar with Olivero’s band of dancers and
guitarists I was free to do as I pleased. And I pleased to escape from my
laughing, chattering companions before the arrival of the Duke and his
guests, and the illuminations in their honour. There was no better place
to wait and watch for the opportunity I wanted, than in the mock-Moorish
kiosk at the end of the lower garden. From there I could see without being
seen; and the moment a chance came I should be ready to take it.
It was early still, but Olivero lost no time in marshalling his little
army into place, that they might make a good effect as a _tableau vivant_
when the great people came. He seated his six men with guitars, their
sombreros at precisely the right angle on their glossy black heads, and in
a row of chairs in front six young women in black dresses with black lace
mantillas, the red and yellow ribbons of their castanets already in their
hands. Then, at intervals, he grouped the dancers, youths, and pretty
girls, carefully dressed in the costumes of different provinces, making a
bouquet of bright colours in the light of a few concealed lamps which
supplemented the silver radiance of the moon, now almost at the zenith.
The minutes passed. 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 Andalucíans 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 Alcázar 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 _malagueña_, the _chaquera vella_; all the classical
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 passionate 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
glass. 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 analyse
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 Alcázar 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