I walked to the middle window and looked sheer down over tall tree-tops to the valley of the Darro, where the roofs of the Albaicín clustered together, softly grey and glistening as the ruffled plumage of nestling birds.
Far away to the left lay the Vega, shimmering under a mist of heat, which gave the look of a crystal sea engulfing the plain, trees and scattered villages gleaming through the transparent flood. Straight before my eyes, on the cactus-clothed shoulder of a hill opposite the tower, glittered a splash of whitewash dotted with black holes, which were the doors and windows of gypsy caverns. And above me, to the right on a higher hillside, rose the towers and miradores of that ancient “summer palace of delights,” the Generalife.
One sweeping glance gave me these details; then, adjusting the field-glass I had brought, I fixed my attention on a house near the Albaicín, which I easily identified as Carmona's palace.
Gazing down from such a height, I had a bird's-eye view of double patios thick with clustering shrubs, orange trees, and cypresses. The powerful glasses brought out clearly the delicate marble pillars supporting the Moorish archways of the upper gallery in one of these patios; but the other was shrouded for me by a group of cypresses.
For a long time I waited—hours it seemed; but no one moved along the gallery or appeared in the half-shuttered windows that looked down into the court; and at last I decided to try the gardens of the Generalife, which I had been told commanded the second patio.
Once, said legend, a prince had been secluded by his father in those gardens and those towers, lest he see the face of a woman, and learn sorrow through love; nevertheless, he had found out the great secret, and had had news of the most beautiful lady in the world. I hoped, as I walked along the avenue of cypresses, that I might be as fortunate; and in the gardens all things spoke of [pg 313]love. There, under the giant cypress, the handsome Abencerrage had come to keep the tryst which cost his head, and thirty-five others as noble. There, at the top of that shaded flight of stone steps, whose balustrades were jewelled with running water, Prince Ahmed had sat to play his lute. From that arcaded balcony Zorayda had looked when love was young, and Boabdil still the lover. In the mirrors of the water-patio Galiana had bent to her own image and asked, “Am I worthy to be loved?”
Out of the tangle of red and white roses, bunched in with golden oranges and scented blooms mingling together in one huge bouquet, I looked to find my love. It was true, I could see clearly now into the cypress patio; and suddenly a white figure came out from a window upon the gallery. The glass at my eye, I thought I recognized Monica's slender girlishness; but a moment later a larger form appeared. The two women stood together looking up, Lady Vale-Avon pointing towards the towers of the Alhambra or the Generalife.
Was it possible she saw me? Yet no, she could not without glasses. But if Monica had indeed been told where I would be at a certain time, could she not have contrived some means to elude her mother and come to the balcony alone?
Long after the two vanished I lingered; waited until sunset; waited until the sky was flooded with rose and gold, and towers and hills were purple in a violet mist. But Monica did not come again.
If she had not been given the message, what guarantee had I that she would receive the other far more important?