XXI
The Duchess's Hand
High on the hill Colonel O'Donnel pointed out the Alcázar of many vicissitudes, long since turned into a military academy, which has made Toledo to Spain what Woolwich is to England. “There your father and I went to school,” said he. “I come every year or two, and wander about with my thoughts.”
With this, he began bowing right and left to young officers who sauntered inside the gateway. Nearly everyone knew and seemed delighted to see him; indeed, who could see the excellent Cherub, and not be glad?
He himself was happy. “There go your father and I!” he exclaimed, picking out the two best-looking infants in a procession of incredibly small boys proudly wearing a smart uniform. “Oh, where are the girls who used to smile at us?”
So we drove into the Moorish-looking stronghold, through a labyrinth of steeply ascending tunnels which were streets. They were so narrow that I would not have believed the car could scrape along without smashing the mud-guards, had not the Cherub valiantly urged us on, with assurances that it could be done. And always we did slide through, the sides of the Gloria so close to open doors and windows that we could have reached into dark rooms, and helped ourselves to loaves of bread, brass cooking vessels, coarse green pottery, jars of flowers, or astonished babies.
There was no space for dwellers in these shadowed lanes to rush from their houses before our car, when warned by the [pg 149]“choof, choof” of the motor as we rattled over the “agony stones,” that something extraordinary was coming; but mothers shrieked for their offspring, while young girls hailed their friends to the free show; and men, women, and children jostled each other good-naturedly in every window and door as we approached, pouring out in our wake, though seemingly half afraid even then that the dragon might take to charging back upon them.
Beautiful faces peered from behind rusty bars, with eyes to tempt any man to “eat iron,” as the saying is. Dark men with sun-warmed eyes, and black heads wrapped in handkerchiefs of scarlet silk, stared curiously at Pilar's veil; and when we emerged from the stone-and-plaster labyrinth, into a wider space where the hotel stands like an ancient palace, we were swamped by the laughing crowd which had formed into a trotting procession behind us.
Just as the marble whiteness of the patio cooled our eyes, down the stairs came those with whom my thoughts had raced ahead; the Duchess of Carmona; Monica and her mother; behind them the Duke.