The Car of Destiny
“Do you mean that the lady will, meet me at your house—to-night?” I asked.
“She hopes it, for there is no other place or way. My sister will bring
the lady; but it is not a house, in your way of speaking, señor. It is a
cave in the hillside which I have made my home, for I am a _gitano_.”
“You live above the Albaicín, in the gypsy quarter, then?” I said.
“No, señor, nearer here than that. You must have seen, if you have walked
about the neighbourhood, that there are many other caves which honeycomb
the hillsides. To find mine you must go towards the cemetery, take the
first turn to the right, follow the winding road which descends, then up a
rough path, and stop at the first of the three gypsy caves. I must not
wait for you, as I have to see that my sister and the lady arrive safely.
But you cannot miss the place; and if I am not waiting at the door, open
it without knocking and walk in. Is that understood, señor?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Then I will go to watch for my sister near the palace. At half-past ten,
señor.”
“At half-past ten.” I echoed his words, and watched him out of sight as he
tramped away in the direction which would take him to the Albaicín. Then I
hurried back to the villa and opened the packet. It contained the
shield-shaped Toledo brooch by the gift of which I had infuriated Carmona;
that, and nothing besides. But—unless it had been stolen from her—it was
an assurance that she had sent the messenger, that she wished me to trust
him.
Nevertheless, there was danger that I might fall into a trap in keeping a
night tryst at the cave of a gypsy, especially a gypsy who had either
deserted or been banished from the colony. But not to run this risk was to
run a far greater one, that of losing the chance offered by Monica; and of
such an alternative I could not even think.
If I told the man, Pepe, who looked after my wants at the villa where I
intended to go, I might succeed in compromising Monica, in case she were
so late that Pepe was alarmed. As her name must be kept out of the affair
at any cost, I decided that due caution would be protection enough. Unless
the news of my presence in Granada had reached Carmona in his bed, there
was little fear of treachery; and when I slipped into my hip pocket the
revolver bought in Madrid, I felt that I was safe.
It was a dark and lonely road, that way of the dead. Not a soul had I met
when I reached a narrow path, a mere goat track, leading higher up the
hillside to a row of four or five tiny lighted windows in the rock. These
must, I knew, mark the cave dwellings of which the gypsy had spoken, some
little offshoot from the main settlement by the Albaicín. The door which I
reached first was closed. No one stood waiting, but I opened it and went
in.
A faint light, cast by a small paraffin lamp set in a niche hollowed out
of the whitewashed rock, made darkness visible in a tiny room with a rough
earthen floor. A red calico curtain at the far end signified a second
cave-room beyond. No one was visible, no one answered when I spoke, and I
sat down to wait on a dilapidated rush-bottomed chair which stood with its
back to the red curtain.
After that, nothing.
And then, dreams.
There was one dream about a room, a large room it seemed to be, shadowy in
the corners, and with walls where Christian and Moorish warriors fought in
tapestry, leaping off sometimes on their stallions, and spurring back into
place again.
In the room was a great bed with dark silk curtains. A man lay in it, but
suddenly sat up, and looked eagerly at something which seemed to be
myself, dead or dying. But I did not care. I knew who he was, and that we
hated each other for some reason which I could not remember, but it was
impossible to recall his name. That was twisted up in a thousand skeins of
silk; or was it a woman’s yellow hair?
The man exclaimed, “Good—very good,” more than once to someone I could not
see. Then he said, when the someone else had spoken, “Only keep him till
after I’m married. I don’t care what you do with him after that. Fling him
into a well, or let him go. Either way he can never find out or prove
anything troublesome.”
This was all of that part of the dream, though there was another which
came soon after, and was somehow connected with it. It was a dream about a
long dark passage, which smelled like a cellar, and I was being dragged
through it by two voices, a thing which did not appear at all out of the
ordinary, though it was disagreeable.
After that, concrete thoughts were lost in one tremendous throbbing ache,
which was in the back of my head at first, but spread slowly down the
spine, until at last my whole body felt as if it had been pounded with
giant hammers.
I had an idea at one time that I had fallen into the power of the
Inquisition, and been tortured by the head screw and the rack, because
often a man in a black _capucha_ flitted about me; but later I realized
that my suffering was caused by becoming conscious of the world’s motion—a
terrible, ceaseless whirling, which, being once felt, could be escaped
only in death.
This was appalling. I lived through many years of the horror, but I fell
off the world at last on to another planet, where there came a period of
peace.
When I waked up I was looking at my hands.
To my great surprise they were no longer brown and strong as a young man’s
hands ought to be, but of a sickly white, and so thin that I found myself
laughing at them in a slow, soft way, as one laughs in one’s sleep.
At first it did not seem to matter that I should have hands like that; but
suddenly, with a rush of blood to the heart, I realized that it was
unnatural, dreadful, that something hideous must have happened to me.
In a moment my head was clear, and I felt as if a tight band had been
taken off my forehead.
Yes, something had happened, but what?
I looked round and saw a room unfamiliar, yet already hated. It was a
small, but beautiful room, the walls covered with Moorish work, such as I
had seen at the Alhambra. I lay on a divan-bed, in an alcove without
windows; but in the room beyond, I saw one with a dainty filigree frame,
supported by a marble pillar. There was also an archway, from which a
curtain was pushed aside, and I could see the end of a marble bath.
How had I come to this place? Where was it, and how long had I been there?
were the next questions I asked myself.
There was no more dreaming now. The room was real; and the whiteness and
emaciation of my hands were real. A man must have been very ill, and for a
long time, to have hands as white and thin as that.
Suddenly I sat up, crying aloud, “Monica!”
The sound of her name brought her image before me. What horrible thing had
been done to me that I should have forgotten her very existence?
Strength failed, and I fell back, a dampness coming out on my forehead.
Above all, what had been done to her? “Don’t leave me alone,” she had
begged; yet I had deserted her. I was—here.
The motoring days came back to me; happy, hopeful days in the open air.
How long ago were they that I should be thus broken, that I should feel
like a man grown old?
Slowly, and cold as the trail of a snake, a thought crawled into my mind.
I remembered a short story I had read once. It was by Gertrude Atherton,
and at the time I had thought it the most harrowing story ever written. A
woman had gone to sleep, young, beautiful, beloved. She had waked to find
her hair grey, her hands old and veined. Twenty blank years of madness she
had spent in a lunatic asylum, after being driven mad by a shock, waking
to sanity at last only to find herself an old woman.
Had I been mad? Was I old now, with my wasted white hands?
Tingling with dread I touched my face. My chin was rough with a stubble of
beard. I fancied there were hollows in my cheeks. Was my hair grey?
Somewhere there must be a mirror. I tried to struggle up and find it, that
I might see my own image and know the worst; but a giddiness came over me,
and I had to lie down again, or I knew that I should faint.
“I have Carmona to thank for this,” I said aloud, furiously. But then I
asked myself, how did I know that there ever had been a Carmona, that
there ever had been a girl called Monica Vale? Perhaps I had dreamed them
both, in the time of madness.
There had been many dreams. Suddenly I remembered a man’s voice saying:
“Only keep him till after I’m married.” The voice had been Carmona’s. I
knew that now.
No, I had never been mad. A horrible trick had been played on me—in the
gypsy’s cave. I remembered that. Everything was blank since, except for
the dreams. Perhaps some of them had been true. Perhaps,
half-unconscious—(for somebody must have come out from behind that red
curtain and struck me on the head)—I had been taken to him, that he might
be sure it was the right man. Somebody had been ordered to keep me, until
after—Again I sat up, with a groan. I must get out of this. I must save
Monica from the man, and from her own mother. But—if it was already too
late?
There was a sound in the room. From a door I could not see, someone had
come in. A key had turned, and was being turned again. The dream of the
Inquisition came back to my mind, for the man in the black _capucha_ stood
looking at me.
“Who are you?” I asked. Although for many years I had spoken English, and
Spanish only for a few weeks, it was mechanically that I used Spanish now.
“Your good friend,” came from under the _capucha_, while there was a
glitter of eyes through the two slanting slits in the black silk.
“If you’re my friend, you’ll let me out of this place, wherever it is,” I
said.
“But I am your doctor as well, and you are too weak to go out. This is the
first time you have spoken sensible words, and now they are not wise.”
“I’m not too weak to hear how I came here, how long I have been, and—” He
cut me short, with a wave of a yellow old hand. Under the _capucha_ he
wore an ordinary black coat, such as elderly Spaniards of the middle class
wear every day.
“You must not excite yourself,” he said. “As for your coming here, I found
you lying in the road one dark night, with your head cut open, and out of
compassion I brought you into my house.”
“If you are a doctor, and have no reason to hide your face from me, why do
you cover it up with a _capucha_?” I went on incredulously.
“It is the _capucha_ of the _cofradìa_ to which I belong,” explained the
man. “I wear it at certain hours because of a vow which will not expire
till Corpus Christi. If I were a wicked person, who wished you harm, why
need I trouble to hide my face so that you should not know it again? I
live alone in this house, and if I wished you evil, I need never let you
leave these rooms. But instead, I have taken care of you, and you have
repaid some experiments I have made, for now I think you are getting well.
You have only to be patient.”
“Tell me how long since you played good Samaritan and picked me up by the
roadside,” said I. “Then perhaps I shall try to be patient.”
“How long?” he echoed. “I can’t tell you that. To a philosopher like me
days and weeks are much the same.”
“Philosophers have often been in the pay of dukes,” I said.
“Those days have passed. I live my life without dukes.”
“Without the Duke of Carmona?”
“The Duke of Carmona? That is a mere name to me. Why do you speak it?”
“I think you can guess.”
“I fear that after all your brain is not clear. We must have a little more
of the good medicine.”
Before I knew what he meant to do, he was out of the alcove, and out of
sight in the room beyond. Again I tried my strength, and would have
followed, but before I could do more than struggle up from the bed, the
door had been unlocked, and locked again.