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 [pg 224]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 [pg 225]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.