The Car of Destiny
should have it.’
“Then she handed me a torn envelope, and I recognized it as the one we had
crumpled up between us when she snatched it away. Your handwriting was on
it, and I never doubted it was yours inside, though it looked as if you’d
written in a hurry, with a bad pen. No name was signed; but the letter
said you thought it best to tell me, without waiting longer, that you
feared we’d both been hasty and made a mistake in our feelings. Our
meeting was romantic, and we’d been carried away by our youth and hot
blood. Now you’d had time to see that it would be unwise of me to give up
a man like the Duke of Carmona for one unworthy enough to have fallen in
love with another girl. Accordingly, you released me from all obligations,
and took it for granted that you were also free. Then you bade me
good-bye, wishing me a happy future in case your car and the Duke’s
happened to go on by different ways. Do you wonder I tried to hate you,
and that I said ‘yes’ the very next night, when the Duke asked me again if
I wouldn’t change my mind and marry him?”
For answer, I caught her against my breast, and we clung to each other as
if we could never part.
“Such a promise is no promise,” I said at last. “I have you, and I don’t
mean to let you go, lest I lose you for ever. Monica, will you trust
yourself to me, and run away with me to-night?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “I daren’t go back to them. But what shall we do?”
“I’ll tell you what I’ve been thinking,” I said. “My car isn’t far off.
Colonel O’Donnel and Pilar, who’d do anything for you and me, are in the
cathedral. Just outside this chapel the man who locked us in is waiting
for my signal to open the door. With the O’Donnels and Dick Waring to see
you through, will you motor with me to Cadiz, take ship for Gibraltar, and
marry me on English soil?”
“Suppose there should be no ship for days?” she hesitated.
“There is one nearly every day; but at worst I can hire a boat of some
sort.”
“Once we were in Gibraltar, you’d be out of reach if the Duke tried to
take revenge,” she said. “Yes, I _will_ go! I love you and I can’t give
you up again. Oh, Ramón, I never would have promised to marry him, if I
hadn’t longed to show you that—that I didn’t care, and that there was
someone who wanted me very much, if you didn’t.”
“How like a woman!” I exclaimed, laughing—for I could laugh now.
“He has only kissed my hand,” she went on, “and I hated even that.”
“Yet you’re wearing his brooch,” a returning flash of jealousy made me
say; “and a mantilla, to please him.”
“The brooch is his mother’s. So is the mantilla. She at least has been
kind; so I let her put them both on for me to-day, when she asked.”
“Kind? When there’s time I’ll tell you one or two things. But now there’s
no time for anything except to take you away.”
“Listen! The Miserere has begun,” she said. “Has it been long? I heard it
only now. Can we get out before it’s over?”
“Of course we can—though not quite as easily, perhaps, as if the crowd
were moving with us. However, we can’t afford to wait.”
“What wonderful music!” Monica whispered. “I wish I dared to feel it were
blessing us.”
“Yes, feel it so,” I said, and involuntarily was silent to listen for an
instant to the melodious flood which swept from aisle to aisle in golden
billows. Out from the wave of organ music and men’s voices, boyish soprano
notes sprayed high, flinging their bright crystals up, up, until they
fell, shattered, from the vaulted ceiling of stone.
From each dimly seen column shot forth one of those slender-stemmed,
flaming white lilies of light, such as had bloomed in Our Lady’s garden,
as the _pasos_ moved blossoming through the streets. It seemed as if they
might have been gathered and replanted here, to lighten the darkness; and
as the music soared and sank, its waves set the lily-flames flickering.
I peered out, and saw my man hovering near. In the gloom he did not catch
the signal I gave him with my hand, but when I shook a handkerchief
between the gratings he came quickly. As he unlocked the doors I slid the
promised bribe into his palm; and having glanced about to make sure as far
as possible that we were not watched, I called Monica.
“Take us out by the nearest way,” I said; and the man began to hurry us
officiously through the crowd.
Monica clung to me tightly, and I could feel the tremblings that ran
through her body. My heart was pounding too; for it is when the ship is
nearest home, after a stormy voyage, that the captain remembers he has
nerves. It seemed too marvellous to be true, that the girl was mine at
last, and yet—what could separate us, now that I held her close against my
side, and she was ready to go with me, out of her world into mine?
“This way, this way, señorito,” our guide warned me, plucking at my arm as
I steered ahead, confused by a thousand moving shadows. I followed,
brushing sharply against a tall man in conical _capucha_ and trailing robe
of blue. He turned, his masked face close to mine, so close that even in
the dusk I caught a flash of glittering eyes. Then, giving me a sudden
push, he cried out, “Help—murder! An anarchist—a free-thinker! To the
rescue!”
It was Carmona’s voice, and I knew instantly that he must have borrowed
this dress from some friend in the cathedral—perhaps a member of the
_cofradìa_ to which he himself belonged—so that he could search for me and
Monica, without being seen by us.
Thrusting the girl behind me, yet keeping her close, I hurled him away,
but he sprang at me again, and this time something glittered in his right
hand. I fought with him for it, and pulled a slim length of steel up
through his closed fingers, so that the sharp dagger-blade must have cut
him to the bone. He gave a cry, and relaxed his grasp; but though he was
disabled for the instant a dozen men in the crowd, which swirled round us
now, caught and held me fast. Monica was wrenched from me; the dagger had
fallen to the ground (but not before I had seen it was of Toledo make);
the figure in the blue _capucha_ was swept out of my sight, and I was
fighting like a madman in a strait-jacket for freedom.
XXXII
ON THE ROAD TO CADIZ
It was a mouse who gnawed a hole in the net that entangled the lion.
Now, I am no lion in importance, nor was Colonel O’Donnel’s messenger of
as little significance as a mouse; yet he was the last creature to whom I
would have looked for succour in a moment of stress. Nevertheless to him I
owed my rescue.
“A mistake, a mistake,” he chirped, jumping about, bird-like, just outside
the circle of struggling men. “I am a verger here; this gentleman was with
me. He did nothing. He is a most respectable and twice wealthy person, a
tourist whom I guide. He is innocent—no anarchist, no free-thinker. That
other—that pretended brother—has made a practical joke. See, he has run
away to escape consequences. There is nothing against this noble señor;
you have it on the word of a verger.”
Because it was bewilderingly dark, and they might have got the wrong man;
because, too, the verger was probably right, and it had been a joke played
upon them by a person who had now disappeared, the twelve or fifteen men
who surrounded me fell back shamefacedly, glad on second thoughts to melt
away before they could be identified and reproached for disturbing the
public peace, and spoiling the music to which their King listened.
I was free, but I would not leave the cathedral yet, for my hope was to
find Monica again. I wandered in every direction, while the verger went
off to bring Dick and the O’Donnels to meet me in the Orange Court.
Pilar’s delight in the first part of my story was dashed by the sequel. Of
course, she said, it must come right in the end, since Monica and I
understood each other at last. But just for the moment everything seemed
difficult. The Duke was sure now that I was Casa Triana, and not Cristóbal
O’Donnel. He would almost certainly make all the trouble he could, and a
man of his influence could make a good deal. As his attempt to stick a
dagger into me—by way of a quick solution—had been covered by the
_capucha_ of a _cofradìa_, I could not take revenge by laying a counter
accusation. I might say I had recognized his voice, and that I thought I
had recognized the dagger bought in Toledo; but I could prove nothing, and
the Duke would score.
Still, as the Cherub remarked consolingly, he could not do much worse than
force me out of Spain. Neither I, nor anyone else, had ever said in so
many words that I was Cristóbal O’Donnel. If people had taken my identity
for granted because of a few round-about hints, and because for a joke I
had borrowed a friend’s uniform for a day or two, nothing very serious
could be made out of that after all; and as Cristóbal really was on leave,
he need not be involved. He was a good officer, whose services were
valued, and I was not to worry lest harm should come upon him. I need
think only of Monica and of myself. Had I formed any idea of what to do
next?
“I must get Monica out of Carmona’s house,” I said.
“You’ll have to lie in wait and snatch her from under their noses next
time they show them,” suggested Dick; “unless—”
“Unless?”
“Carmona keeps his indoors until he’s arranged to have yours politely
deported.”
“I can’t be got rid of in an hour.”
“You could to-morrow.”
“I’m afraid you can,” sighed the Cherub, “and that, though I shall do my
best, I may be powerless to help you.”
“What if it were known that he saved the King yesterday?” Pilar asked her
father.
“The King is going away to-morrow. You know, he’s off to England in a few
days. Besides, the incident to-day will be hushed up. The King will know,
of course, and a few others; but it will be kept out of the
papers,—anyhow, until they’ve got their hands on both the men concerned.”
“I’ve still got to-night,” I said, “and it’s not eleven yet. I hoped that
in the confusion Monica had given her mother and Carmona the slip, and
that if I waited here I might find her again. I thought she might try to
get back to the chapel where we had our talk, trusting that I’d look for
her there. But she didn’t come, and I searched everywhere in vain before I
tried watching the crowd pass through the Court of Oranges. Now, I’m
certain that Carmona or Lady Vale-Avon must have pounced upon her while I
was surrounded, and forced her away. No doubt they’re at home long ago.
Why shouldn’t I appeal to the English consul, and say that the Duke of
Carmona’s detaining an English girl in his house against her will?”
“No use,” said the Cherub. “She’s under age, and she’s with her mother,
who’s visiting the Duchess.”
“Then I’ll go to Carmona’s door and make such a row that they’ll be
obliged to let me in.”
“You’d get into a police cell instead. A man’s house is his castle,
especially when it’s a palace and he’s a Duke.”
I was silenced. I knew the Cherub was right; but it seemed monstrous that
in this twentieth century such tyranny should divide a girl from her
lover.
When I had thought for a moment I said, “Anyhow, I shall go to the house
and try to bribe a servant. Once in, I’d not come out without Monica. I’ve
done two satisfactory things to-day by bribery and corruption, and I don’t
see why I shouldn’t bring it off the third time.”
“The Duke’s servants have been in the employ of the family for years, and
their fathers and grandfathers before them. No money would bribe them to
deceive their master and mistress,” said the Cherub.
“I shouldn’t have thought either the Duke or his mother capable of
inspiring such devotion.”
“It isn’t devotion—it’s fear. To an unfaithful servant in that house—well,
almost anything might happen.”
“Have you any advice to give me, then?” I asked, in despair.