“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 [pg 212]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, [pg 213]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.