THE
CAR OF DESTINY

by
C. N. and A. M. WILLIAMSON

OTHER BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHORS
Lady Betty Across the Water,
My Friend the Chauffeur,
The Princess Virginia,
etc.

Copyright, 1907, by The McClure Company
Copyright, 1906, by McClure, Phillips & Co.

LADY MONICA

To
Doña María del Pilar Harvey,
We Dedicate This Spanish Story

C.N. and A.M. Williamson

Contents

[pg 3]

I

The King's Car

“Motor to Biarritz? You must be mad,” said Dick Waring.

“Why?” I asked; though I knew why as well as he. “A nice way to receive an invitation.”

“If you must know, it's because the King of Spain will be there, visiting his English fiancée,” Dick answered.

“I wish him happiness,” said I. “I hear he's a fine young fellow. Why isn't there room in Biarritz for the King and for me?”

“The detectives won't think there is, nor will they give you credit for your generous sentiments,” said Dick.

“They won't know I'm there.”

“They knew when you went to Barcelona, from Marseilles.”

This was a sore subject. It is not my fault that my father was as recklessly brave a general, and as obstinately determined a partisan as Don Carlos ever had. If I had been born in those days, it is possible that I should have done as my father did; but I was not born, and therefore not responsible. Nor was it the King's fault that we lost our estates which my ancestors owned in the days of Charles V; nor that we lost our fortune, we Casa Trianas; nor that my father was banished from Spain. For the King was not born, therefore he was not responsible; so why should I blame him for anything that has happened to me?

It was perhaps ill-judged to visit my father's land, since to him it had been a land forbidden. But a few months after his death, when I was twenty-one, the longing to see Spain had become an obsession. And it must have been my evil star which [pg 4]influenced an anarchist to throw a bomb at a royal personage on the very day I arrived at Barcelona, thinly “disguised” under an English name.

My identity was discovered at once, as the son of the great dead Carlist. I was suspected and clapped into a cell, to wait until my innocence could be proved. This was not easy; but, on the other hand, there was no proof against me; and after an experience which scourged my pride and emptied my purse, I was released, only to be politely but firmly advised never again to show the undesirable face of a Casa Triana in Spain.

It was after this that I flung myself off to Russia, and through friendly influence got a commission in the army. I had some adventures in the Boxer rising; and though Heaven knows I have no grudge against the Japanese, the fight I made later on the Russian side gave me something to do for two years. After the Peace with Idleness, came the motor mania, and I thought of nothing else for a time. But when you have run your car for months, motoring for its own sake ceases to be all in all. You ask yourself what country you would like best to visit with the machine you love.

Pride kept me from answering that question with the name of “Spain”; but it was because Biarritz is at the door of Spain that I had just invited Dick Waring—the best of friends, the most delightful of Americans, who fought side by side with me, for fun, in China—to drive there in my Gloria car.

“Yes, they knew when I went to Barcelona,” I admitted; for Dick was familiar with the story. “But that was different. Anyhow, I'm going to Biarritz, whatever happens. You can do as you like.”

“If you will go, I'll go too,” said Dick; “and if anything happens I'll be in it with you. But you may regret your rashness.”

“I've never yet regretted rashness,” I said. “Things done on impulse always turn out for the best.”

So we started from Paris the next day, and had a splendid run, [pg 5]through scenery to set the spirit singing in tune with the thrumming of the motor.

Whatever was to happen in Biarritz, and I was far enough from guessing then, nothing happened by the way; and we arrived on a morning of blue and gold.

We put up at a private hotel out of the way from fashionable thoroughfares; and, as my childhood and early youth were passed in England, I could use an English name without making myself ridiculous by a foreign accent. As for my brown face and black eyes, many a Cornishman has a face as brown and eyes as black; therefore, I edited the name of Triana into Cornish Trevenna, and changed Cristóbal, my middle name, into Christopher.

We took our first meal in the restaurant, and everyone at the little tables near by, was talking of the King and “Princess Ena”; how pretty she was, how much in love he; how charming their romance. My heart quite warmed to my youthful sovereign, who has had seven fewer years on earth than I. I felt that, if I had had a fair chance, I should have been his loyal subject.

“I'd like to have a look at him,” said I to Waring after lunch. “The lady with the nose who sat on our left said to her husband with the chin, that the King and the two Princesses motor every afternoon. We'll motor too; and where they go, there we'll go also.”

“Take care,” said Dick.

“A cat may look at a king. So may Chris Trevenna.”

“No good advising you to be cautious.”

“Of course not. You wouldn't care a rap for me if there was.”

“Shouldn't I? Anyhow, Chris Trevenna might as well wear goggles.”

“There's no dust to-day,” said I. “It rained in the night.”

“I give you up,” said Dick. And if giving me up meant going out with me in my big blue car directly after lunch, then he kept his word. Ropes, my chauffeur, and right-hand man, who sits always in the tonneau, had already heard all about the King's automobile, and was primed with particulars. He leaned across [pg 6]to describe its appearance, as well as mention the make; and when such a car as he was in the act of picturing passed us, going round a bend of the road which leads to Spain, there was no mistaking it.

“Let's follow,” said I.

Dick sighed, but naturally I paid no attention to that.

There were five persons in the King's car. The slim young owner, three ladies, two very slender and young, and the chauffeur, all five masked or goggled, so that it was impossible to see their faces.

“I wish something would happen to them,” I said.

Waring looked shocked.

“Just enough of a something to stop the car, and tempt the ladies to take off their motor-veils. I may never have another chance to see the future Queen of Spain.”

When I was a small lad in England, I used to lie under a favourite apple-tree in the orchard of the old place where we lived, and wish with all my might for the fall of a certain apple on which eyes and heart were fixed. It was extraordinary how often the apple would fall.

In a flash I remembered those wishes and those apples as we began to gain upon the King's car. Its pace slackened, and then it stopped. The chauffeur jumped out, and two of the ladies were raising their thick veils as we came up.

As we were not supposed to know the King, who was “incog,” the ordinary civilities between motorists were in order. I slowed down, and taking off my hat, inquired in French if there were anything I could do.

The two girls, who had hastily whipped off their veils, turned and glanced at me. Both were more than pretty; blond, violet-eyed, with radiant complexions; but one seemed to me beautiful as the Blessed Damozel looking down from the star-framed window of heaven; and I was suddenly sick with jealousy of the King, because I believed that she was his Princess.

It was he who answered, in French better than mine. He thanked [pg 7]me for my kind offer, and referred me to his chauffeur, who had not yet discovered the cause of the car's sudden loss of power. But even as he spoke, the mystery was solved. There was a leak in the petrol-tank, near the bottom; the last drop of essence had run away, and, as they had come out for a short spin, there was none in reserve.

An odd chance it seemed that brought me, the son of a banished rebel, to the King's aid; but life is odd. I rejoiced because it was odd, and more because of the girl.

I had a spare bidon of petrol which, with conventional expressions of pleasure, I gave to my fellow motorist. We exchanged compliments, and as nobody stared at me askance, I had reason to believe that neither words, actions, nor looks were out of the way. Yet what I said and did was said and done with no more guidance of the mind than the gestures and speech of a mechanical doll.

I was conscious only of the girl's eyes, for I had done that unreasonable, indefinable thing—fallen in love at first sight, and I had fallen very far, and very deep. She did not glance at me often, and after the first I scarcely glanced at her at all, lest my eyes should be indiscreet. It was the most curious thing in the world, and far beyond anything that had ever happened to me; but already I knew that I could not lose her out of my life. Sooner could I lose life itself. If she were the Princess who was to be Queen of Spain, I would follow her to Madrid, come what might, just for the joy of breathing the air she breathed, of seeing her drive past me in her carriage sometimes. I had wondered, knowing the traditions of our family, many of them tragic, when love would come to me. Now it had come quickly, in a moment; but not to go as it had come. It and I would be one, for always. The girl was little more than a child, but I knew she was to be the one woman for me; and that was what I feared my eyes might tell her. So I would not look; yet the air seemed charged with electricity to flash a thousand messages, and my blood tingled with the assurance that she had had my message, that unconsciously she was sending back a message to me.

[pg 8] All this was going on in my inner self, while the outer husk of self delivered itself of conventional things.

A leak was mended, a tank filled, while my life was being remade. Then there were bows, lifting of caps, many politenesses, and the King's car shot away.

“What's the matter?” inquired Waring by and by.

“Nothing,” I answered. “Why do you ask?”

“You act as if you'd had a stroke. Aren't you going to drive on?”

“No. Yes. I'm going back,” I said, and turned the car.

“You don't mean to follow, then?”

“There's something I need to do at once at Biarritz,” I answered. It was true. I needed to find out whether she was the Princess, or—just a girl.

[pg 9]

II

The Girl

It was easy to learn that she was not the Princess. I did that by going into a stationer's shop and asking for a photograph of the royal lovers. It was not quite so easy to find out who she was, without pinning my new secret on my sleeve; but luckily everyone in Biarritz boasted knowledge of the King's affairs, and the affairs of the pretty Princess. Christopher Trevenna made himself agreeable after dinner to the lady with the nose, who would probably have shrunk away in fear if she had known that she was talking with the Marqués de Casa Triana.

I, in my character of Trevenna, found out that the Princess had a friend, Lady Monica Vale, daughter of the widowed Countess of Vale-Avon, who, when at home, lived in the Isle of Wight. At present, the two were staying at Biarritz, in a villa; and Lady Monica, a girl of eighteen or nineteen, sometimes had the honour of going out with the Princesses, in the King's motor.

There were other privileged friends as well; but the description of Lady Monica Vale, though painted with a colourless brush, was unmistakable.

Casually I inquired the name of the house where Lady Vale-Avon and her daughter were staying, and having learned it, I made an excuse to escape from the lady with the nose.

It was half-past ten o'clock, and a night flooded with moonlight. I strolled out, smoking a cigarette, and in ten minutes stood before the garden gate of the Villa Esmeralda.

There were lights in three or four of the windows, sparkling [pg 10]among close-growing trees; and I had not finished my second cigarette, when a carriage drove round the corner and stopped.

I moved into the background. A groom jumped down, unfastened the gate, and having opened the brougham door, respectfully aided a middle-aged lady to descend.

The moonlight showed me a clear, proud profile, and fired the diamonds in a tiara which crowned a head of waved grey hair.

There were billows of violet satin and lace to keep off the ground; and as the groom helped the wearer to adjust them under her chinchilla coat, a girl sprang out of the carriage, her white figure and rippling hair of daffodil gold in full moonlight.

I stood as a man might stand who sees a vision, hardly breathing. I made no sound, yet she turned and saw me, sheltered as I was by the dappled trunk of a tall plane-tree. It was as if I had called, and she had answered.

I knew she remembered me, and that she did not misunderstand my presence. There was no anger in her face, only surprise, and a light which was hidden as she dropped her head, and passed on through the gate.

I could have sung the song of the stars. She had not forgotten me since the afternoon. The look in my eyes then, had arrested some thought of hers, and set me apart in her mind from other men.

It was no stupid conceit which made me feel this, but a kind of exalted conviction.

When the gate was shut, I took off my hat and looked at the lighted windows. I could make her care. I said to myself, “We're meant for each other. And if that's true, though all the mountains in the world were piled up as barriers between us, I'd cross them.”

That was a vow. And through the remaining hours of the night I tried to plan how it would be best to begin its fulfilment.

Men who have gone through a campaign as close friends, have few secrets from one another; and I had none from Dick Waring. Nevertheless, I would now have kept one if it were possible; [pg 11]but it was not. If I had not told him, he would have guessed, and then he might have thought that he had the right to chaff me on losing my head.

It is only a happy lover who can bear to be chaffed, however, and a few words were enough to show my tactful American where to set his feet on the slippery path.

He too had seen the girl; therefore he could not be surprised at my state of mind. But he regretted it, and urged that the best I could do was to go away, before the thought of her had taken too deep a hold upon me.

“You see,” he said, “you're in a hopeless position; and it's better to look facts in the face. If you'd fallen in love with almost any other girl, except Princess Ena herself, you might have hoped. But as it is, what have you to look forward to? You oughtn't to have come to Biarritz. In the circumstances, and with the King here, it was bravado. Friends of his, enemies of yours, might even say it was bad taste, which is worse. And then, having come, you proceed to follow the King's motor-car; you fall head over ears in love with a girl in it, a friend of the bride-elect, to whom your real name, if she's not heard it already, could easily be made to seem anathema maranatha. But that's not all. You're here under a name not your own. If you should by luck or ill-luck get a chance to meet Lady Monica, you couldn't be introduced to her as Christopher Trevenna; it would be a false pretence; still less could you throw your real name in her face; for between the King of Spain as a friend, and you as an acquaintance, the girl would be in an uncomfortable position, to say the least. No, my dear fellow, you can't meet this young lady; and the only thing for your peace of mind, if you've really fallen in love, is to go away.”

I had no arguments with which to meet Dick's. I listened in silence, but—I made no preparation for departure. If there was nothing to be gained by staying, at least there was as little to be gained by going; for I knew that I should not forget the girl. If I were struck blind, her face would still live for my eyes, white and pure against a background of darkness.

[pg 012] We stayed on at Biarritz, but I behaved with circumspection, and made no further attempts to put myself in the King's Way, though he arrived at the Villa Mouriscot every morning from San Sebastian. Dick approved my conduct and, pitying my depression, perhaps repented his hardness. He found several Parisian friends at Biarritz, and when we had been there for three days, he came back to the hotel from the Casino one night with an important air.

“Strange how one's tempted to do things one knows one oughtn't to do,” said he. “Now, it's unwise to tell you I've met a man who knows Lady Monica Vale, yet I'm doing it.”

“What did the man say?” I asked.

“A number of things—charming, of course. She's not engaged, if that's any consolation.”

“Oh, I knew that.”

“How?”

“By her eyes.”

“Apparently she observed yours also.”

“What? She's spoken of—she—”

“The sister of my man is a friend of Lady Monica's. She told the sister about the motor-car adventure.”

“For goodness sake don't force me to ask questions.”

“I won't. I've a soft heart, which has often been my undoing. She said she'd seen the most interesting man in the world. Don't faint.”

“Don't be an ass.”

“I'm not chaffing. She did say that—honest Injun. At least, I've Henri de la Mole's word for it. His sister was at school at the convent of the Virgin of Tears with Lady Monica Vale. Lady Monica supposed the other day that we were both French, which is a compliment to your accent. She said she wished she could find out ‘who was the brown man with the eyes.’ I'm a fool to have told you that though, eh? It can't do you any good, and will probably make you worse.”

“But it has done me good.”

[pg 013] “Flattered your vanity. However, I haven't told you all yet. De la Mole says the mother's a dragon, hard as iron, cold as steel, living for ambition. She was left poor, on her husband's death, as the Vale-Avon estates went with the title to a distant relative, and the girl's been brought up to make a brilliant match. She's been given every accomplishment under Heaven, to add to her beauty; and as the family's one of the oldest in Great Britain, connected with royalty in one way or another, in Stuart days, Lady's Monica's expected to pull off something from the top branch, in the way of a marriage. De la Mole's heard that the present Lord Vale-Avon has been first favourite with the mother up till lately, though he's next door to an idiot. Princess Ena's engagement to the King of Spain has changed everything. You see, Lady Vale-Avon and her daughter live not far from the Princess, in the Isle of Wight. When the King came a-courting to England, came also, though not exactly in his train, another Spaniard, the Duke of Carmona, and—”

“Don't,” I cut in; “I won't hear his name in connection with her's. That half Moorish brute!”

“He may have a dash of Moorish blood, but he's not half Moorish; and if he's a brute, he's a good-looking brute, according to de la Mole, also he's one of the richest young men in Spain. Lady Vale-Avon—”

I jumped up and stopped Dick. “I'm in earnest,” I said. “I can't bear to listen. I know the sort of things you'd say. But don't. If you do, I think I'll kill the fellow.”

“Ever met him?”

“No. The men of my house and of his have been enemies for generations. But I've heard of certain exploits.”

“He's coming here to stop with his mother, the old Duchess, who's been spending the winter at Biarritz. Another reason for you to vamose.”

“You mean, to stay. At least, he shan't have a clear coast.”

“I don't see how you can hope to block it.”

[pg 014] “I will—somehow.”

“No doubt you're a hundred times the man he is, but—fate's handicapped you for a show place in the matrimonial market. You are—”

“A man countryless and penniless. Don't hesitate to state the case frankly.”

“Well, you've said it. While the other's rich, and a grandee of Spain. And, though de la Mole says the King doesn't care for him, on account of something or other connected with the Spanish-American War, he's bound to become a persona grata at Court if he marries a friend of the young Queen; and, no doubt, that influences his choice.”

“Thank Heaven, Lady Monica isn't Spanish.”

“Ah, but Spain's the fashion now. And you haven't heard all my news. Henri de la Mole says Lady Monica is asked to be a maid of honour for the young Queen of Spain, the one Englishwoman she's to have in attendance.”

“At least the wedding won't be till June. It's only the end of February now. I've got more than three months.”

“You haven't got one. Soon after the Princesses leave Biarritz, Lady Vale-Avon and Lady Monica are going to visit the old Duchess of Carmona in Spain.”

“What, they're going to Seville?”

“If her house is there. I'm telling you what I've been told.”

“The principal house of the Duke is in Seville, though he has a place near Granada, and a flat in Madrid as a substitute for a fine house that was burned down.”

“Then Seville's where they'll be. Anyhow, they're to see the great show in Holy Week there.”

It was as if Dick had suddenly drenched me with iced water.

For a few seconds I did not speak. Then I said, “Are you trying to break it to me that the match is arranged?”

“I told you Lady Monica wasn't engaged.”

“And I told you I knew she wasn't. But that isn't to say the mother, the woman ‘as hard as iron and cold as steel,’ hasn't [pg 15]planned her daughter's future, a girl so young, and always kept under control.”

“It looks as if the wind was setting in that quarter. A person of Lady Vale-Avon's type would hardly accept such an invitation if she didn't intend something to come of it.”

“You're certain the invitation's been accepted?”

“Certain. Angèle de la Mole has been with her brother in Spain, and Lady Monica's been asking her advice about what to take and what to wear. The Duke himself is in Paris, buying a new automobile; at least, so his mother says; but other people say he's at Monte Carlo. Anyhow, he's expected here in time for the ball.”

“What ball?”

“Didn't I tell you? A masked ball the old Duchess is giving in honour of Princess Ena. A grand affair it will be, says de la Mole. There's been jealousy about the invitations, which have been carefully weeded.”

“You and I'll accept,” said I.

“We're not likely to have the chance.”

“Sometimes a man must make a chance. I shall meet Lady Monica at the Duchess's ball.”

“All right. Suppose you go in the garb of a palmer?”

“Eh?”

“I was thinking of another first meeting, case not dissimilar, you know, Romeo and Juliet. My poor, mad friend, there's more hope for a Montague with a Capulet than for a Casa Triana with a friend of the future Queen of Spain, and the daughter of a Lady Vale-Avon.”

“Romeo won Juliet.”

“It wasn't exactly a fortunate marriage. See here, if you're going in for the part of Romeo, it's no good asking me to play Mercutio.”

I looked at Dick and smiled. “I shall ask nothing,” I said. “Yet—”

“Yet, you know mighty well, if you want a Mercutio, I'll be [pg 16]ready to take up the rôle at a moment's notice all for the sake of your beaux yeux. Well, you're right. There's something queer about you, Ramón, which makes us others glad to do what we can, even if it were to cost our lives. If you'd been a king in exile, you'd have had no trouble in finding followers. From your French valet to your Russian soldiers; from your English chauffeur to your American friend, it's pretty well the same. I expect you'll get to that masked ball.”

“If I don't, it won't be for lack of trying,” said I.

“But—”

“But what—”

“This affair of yours is going to end in tragedy—for someone,” said Dick.

[pg 17]

III

The Guest Who Was Not Asked

During the next two or three days I found more to do. I got Dick to introduce me to his friend Henri de la Mole, not as Christopher Trevenna, but under my own name, and when he and his sister had been interested in what they chose to think a romance, I was able to learn through them that, curiously enough, Lady Vale-Avon had arranged for her daughter to appear at the ball as Juliet.

The costume, it seemed, decided itself, because there happened to be among Lady Vale-Avon's inherited and most treasured possessions, an interesting pearl head-dress of the conventional Juliet fashion. This had been sent for from England; and if I could succeed in getting to the ball, as I fully intended to do, I should have little difficulty in identifying the head that I adored.

Had I not taken de la Mole more or less into my confidence, he would have done nothing to further my interests; but, if I really have any such power as Dick Waring hinted, I used it to enlist de la Mole upon my side. Finally he not only agreed, but offered to help me enter the Duchess of Carmona's house as one of her masked guests. He had been asked to stand at the door that night, and request each person, or in any case the man of each party, to raise his mask for an instant. This, in order to keep out reporters and intruders of all sorts; and his promise was to let me pass in unchallenged. I might count on his good offices, not only in that way, but in any other way possible, for “all the world loves a lover,” said he. And he wished me the best of luck, though he looked as if he hardly expected me to have it.

[pg 018] Probably it was foolish and conceited, but I could not resist playing up to the rôle Dick suggested. She was to be Juliet. I would be Romeo.

By this time, no doubt, the Duchess's invited guests had their costumes well under way; I had to get mine, and the only way to have something worthy of the occasion was to go to Paris for it. I did go, and was back in Biarritz in two days.

The rest moved easily, without a hitch. The night of the ball came. I dressed and went alone, rather than drag Dick into an affair which might end disagreeably.

I did not put myself forward, but stood for a while and watched the dancers, waiting for my chance.

Carmona had arrived the day before. I had never met him, but what I had heard I did not like; and having seen him once or twice in London, at a distance, he was recognizable in a costume copied from a famous portrait of that Duke of Alba who loomed great in Philip the Second's day. Because of a slight difference one from the other, in the height of his shoulders, he was difficult to disguise; and though the arrangement of the costume was intended to hide the peculiarity, it was perceptible.

When the “Duke of Alba” had danced twice in succession with Juliet Capulet, I could bear my rôle of watcher no longer. Besides, I knew that I had not much time to waste. For the sake of de la Mole, who had run the risk of admitting a stranger, I must vanish before the hour for the masks to fall. When I took off my cap and bowed before this white Juliet with the pearl-laced plaits of gold, she gazed at me through her velvet mask in the silence of surprise. I could not guess whether she puzzled herself as to what was under my yellow-brown wig and my mask; but at least she must know it was Romeo who begged a dance.

I did not urge my claim on such a plea, however, least it should rouse Carmona's opposition, and cause him to keep the girl from me if he could. I merely said, “The next is our dance,” risking a rebuff; but it did not come.

[pg 019] “Yes,” she said, almost timidly. It was the first time I had heard her speak, and her voice went to my heart.

The Duke stared, as though he would have stripped off my mask by sheer force of curiosity. But he had to let the girl go; and as the music began she was in my arms. I hardly dared believe my own luck. Neither of us spoke. I was lost in the sense of her nearness, the knowledge that it was the music which gave me the right to hold her thus, and that when the music died I must let her go.

But a quick thought came. If we danced the waltz through, Carmona or someone else would claim her for the next. If I could hide the girl before it was over, perhaps I might keep her for a little time. Indeed, I must keep her, if this meeting were not to end in failure; for there were things I had to say.

The conservatory was too obvious; and the shallow staircase with its rose-garlanded balusters, and its fat silk cushion for each step, would soon be invaded by a dozen couples. What to do, then? I would have given much to know the house.

“I must speak with you,” I said at last. “Where can we go?”

She did not say in return, “Do you know me, then?” or any other conventional thing. The hope in me that she had remembered well enough to guess who I was, brightened. She would not have answered a person she regarded as a stranger, as she answered me,

“There's a card-room at the end of the corridor to the left, off the big hall, where we might rest for a moment or two,” she said. “But I mustn't stop long.”

“No,” I promised. “I won't try to keep you. I ask only a few moments. I can't tell how I thank you for giving me those.”

I threw a glance round for Carmona, and saw him dancing with a stately Mary Stuart. I guessed his partner to be Lady Vale-Avon; and if I were right, it was a bad omen. She was not a woman to care for extraneous dancing, therefore she favoured Carmona in particular.

Still, for the moment he was occupied; and when his back was [pg 20]turned I whisked Lady Monica out of the ball-room, past the decorated staircase in the square hall, and to the room at the end of the corridor. There I pushed aside a portière and followed her in.

She had been right; the room was unoccupied, though two or three bridge tables were ready for players. In one corner was a small sofa. The girl sat down, carefully leaving no place for me, even had I presumed; and, leaning forward, clasped her little hands nervously round her knees.

Then she looked up at me through her mask; and I did not keep her waiting.

“I've no invitation to-night,” I said. “But I had to come. I came to see you. Do you forgive me for saying this?”

“I—think so,” she answered.

“You would be sure, if you knew all.”

“I do know. At least—I mean—but of course, I oughtn't to be here with you.”

“According to convention you oughtn't. Yet—”

“I'm not thinking of conventions. But—oh, I should hate you to misunderstand!”

“I could never misunderstand.”

I snatched off my mask and stood looking down at her, knowing that my face would say what was in my heart, and not now wishing to hide the secret.

“You know,” I said, “that I've worshipped you since the first moment I saw you. It was impossible to meet you in any ordinary way, for you have no friend who would introduce to you the Marqués de Casa Triana. Have you ever heard that name before, Lady Monica?”

“Yes,” she answered frankly. “I heard it yesterday. From Angèle de la Mole.”

“Her brother's a friend of my best friend.”

“I know.”

“If it hadn't been for him, I should have had great trouble in getting here to-night. Yet I would have come. Did Mademoiselle de la Mole tell you that I loved you?”

[pg 021] Lady Monica dropped her head and did not answer, but the little hands were pressed tightly together.

“I've always been proud of my name,” I said, “though it's counted a misfortune to bear it; but when I saw you, then I knew for the first time how great a misfortune it may be.”

“Why?”

“Because my only happiness can come now in having you for my wife; and even if I could win your love, you wouldn't be allowed to marry my father's son.”

“Your father may have been mistaken,” the girl faltered. “I do think he was. But he was a gloriously brave man. Even the enemies against whom he fought must respect his memory. I—I've read of him. I—bought a book yesterday. You see—I've thought about you. I couldn't help it. We saw each other only those few minutes, and we didn't even speak; yet somehow it was different from anything else that ever happened to me.”

“It was fate,” I said. “We were destined to meet, and I was destined to love you. If I thought I could make you care, that would give me a right I couldn't have otherwise; the right to try and win your love, and beat down every obstacle.”

“I could—I do care,” she whispered. “Even if I were never to see you again, I shouldn't forget. This—would be the romance of my life.”

“Angel!” I said. And then she took off her mask, with such a divine smile that I could have knelt at her feet as at the shrine of a saint.

“Isn't it wonderful?” she asked. “I didn't find out your name till yesterday, though I tried before; and we don't know each other at all—”

“Why, we've known each other since the world began. My soul had been waiting to find yours again, and found it the other afternoon, on the road to my own land. That's what people who don't understand call ‘love at first sight.’ ”

“I think it must be so; because there was never anything like that first minute when you looked at me.”

[pg 022] “If I could have known, it would have saved me sleepless nights. For now you're mine, my dearest, just as I am yours. Nothing can take you from me now.”

“Ah, I'm afraid! Even if—everything were different in your life, it would be difficult; for—there's someone else in mine already.”

“There can be no one else, since you care for me.”

“Not truly in my life. But there's someone my mother wants me to marry.”

“The Duke of Carmona.”

“You knew?”

“You see, I've thought of nothing but you; and I've learned all I could about what concerns you.”

“I don't like him, not even as a friend. He's handsome enough, but I'm sure he has a most horrible temper. I could be afraid of him. I believe I am afraid. And mother—you don't know her, but—when she makes up her mind that you're to do a certain thing, you find yourself doing it. That's one reason I was so glad when you came to-night, and said, ‘The next is our dance,’ in such a determined way. Not only did you take me away from him, but—I felt you'd try to keep me from him, in the end.”

“Try!” I echoed. “I will keep you. Trust me my darling. I've been foolish to come to Biarritz under another name. This isn't Spain; and even a Casa Triana has a right to be here. But luckily not much harm's done. Through the de la Moles I'll be presented to Lady Vale-Avon; I'll tell her that, though compared to the days when my people counted for something in the history of Spain, I'm penniless, still my father left me enough to live on and keep a wife who loves me better than she loves society. I'll tell Lady Vale-Avon that there are countries in which my name's well thought of, even in these piping times; that there I'll do something worth doing—”

“You've already done things worth doing,” the girl broke in; “splendid things.”

[pg 023] “I've done nothing yet, but I'll change that. I'll ask your mother to give me a chance—to wait—”

“No,” she insisted. “Mother would refuse, and everything would be worse than ever.”

“Darling one, they couldn't be worse. Because now, I'm doing what I oughtn't to do, although it's been forced upon me by my love. To deserve you in the faintest degree, I must be open in my dealings. I must speak to Lady Vale-Avon.”

“She'll never consent.”

“At least I shall have done the right thing. Now we've had this talk, now you know that you're all the world, and heaven besides, to me, even for your mother's sake you won't throw me over, will you?”

“No, a thousand times no. I didn't dream loving would be like this. It would kill me to give you up.”

“Then nothing can part us.”

“It makes me feel brave to hear you say so. But—you don't know mother.”

“I know myself, and I trust you.”

“I'm so young, and—I've never been allowed to have my own way. I've always given up.”

“Because you were alone, with no one to help you. Now you have me.”

“That's true. But—”

“Precious one, there's no 'but.'”

“I wish I could think so! Yet something seems to say that if you speak to mother, we shall be lost. I love you—but—do let it be kept secret for a while.”

“With what end?”

“I hardly know. Only, I've the strongest presentiment it would be best.”

“And I've the strongest conviction that not only would it be wrong, but that you wouldn't respect me if I consented.”

“I beg of you, wait at least till the royalties leave Biarritz before you tell mother, or anyone, who you are.”

[pg 024] I could not help smiling, though rather bitterly. “You've heard about my adventure in Barcelona?”

“Yes, from Angèle. I couldn't bear it if you were to have trouble here.”

“There's no danger of that.”

“One can't tell. Circumstances which you don't foresee might seem to involve you in some plot. Oh, if you love me, wait till the royalties have gone.”

How could I refuse those soft eyes, and those little clasped hands?

I caught the hands and crushed them against my lips, the rosy fingers that smelled of orris, and the polished nails like pink jewels. As I bent over my love, the curtain which covered the doorway waved as in a gust of wind.

Quick as light, Monica snatched away her hands, but it was too late. Carmona was holding back the portière for Lady Vale-Avon.

He must have been watching. He must have known that I had brought Lady Monica to this room. He must have fetched the girl's mother on purpose to find us together.

These were the thoughts in my mind as I faced the two, mask in hand.

They had seen me kissing Monica's fingers. It was useless to hope that they had not.

“Leave the room instantly, my daughter,” said Lady Vale-Avon, in a low voice. She too had taken off her mask.

It was a disastrous situation for me, and one all too difficult to carry off with dignity.

“Madame,” I said. “I am the Marqués de Casa Triana. I met Lady Monica some time ago, and have this moment told her that I love her. Now, I ask your consent to—”

“Casa Triana here!” exclaimed Carmona, in a tone which could have expressed no more of horror, had I been a bandit at large.

“Have no fear for your house,” I could not help sneering.

[pg 025] He gave me a look not to be forgiven a man by a man. “I have no such fear,” he said; “but there are those here whose safety is dear to me; and your name is not one which should be spoken under the same roof.”

It was thus that he chose to inform Lady Vale-Avon, if she had been ignorant of it, that I was a notorious character.

“Will you tell me,” he went on, “how you found your way into my mother's house, where no one of your name could be an invited guest?”

“There's a window,” said I, thinking to save de la Mole, “by which the world and his wife might enter.”

“I saw you, masked, in the ball-room half an hour ago.”

Half an hour ago! Perhaps he was not exaggerating. But the thirty minutes, if there had been thirty, had passed like one.

“I was there,” I admitted, “looking for Lady Monica Vale. We danced together, and I brought her here—”

“Who is this man, Duke?” Though she spoke to him, Lady Vale-Avon's eyes, cold as points of steel, pierced mine.

“A person who, whatever his intentions may be, ought not to be in Biarritz while King Alfonso's here.”

“I remember the name now. And he has come to your house, uninvited; he proposes to marry my daughter—a man whom I've never seen! You have your answer, Marqués de Casa Triana, if you need an answer. It is, no. Pray accept it quietly, and cease to persecute us, otherwise I must ask the Duke to act for me, as I have no husband or son. Is that enough?”

“It is not enough,” I echoed. “I love your daughter, and I trust she cares for me. I will not give her up.”

“Monica, I told you to go, and you disobey me,” exclaimed Lady Vale-Avon. “Now, I tell you to send this man away.”

“Mother—I love him,” faltered the girl. “Wait—when you've heard—when you know what he is—”

“You talk like a child, Monica,” her mother said. “You are a child. It's your one excuse; but this man, who must have [pg 26]hypnotized you, has reached years of discretion. If he will not leave the room, we must.”

“I'll go, Lady Vale-Avon,” I said, “but first let me say once more, frankly, I will never give up your daughter.” Then I looked straight at Monica. “Trust me,” I said, “as I trust you; and have courage.”

With that I bowed, and walked out at the window by which I hoped the Duke thought I had come in.

“I'm not sure,” I heard him say to Lady Vale-Avon, “that I oughtn't to inform the police. In Barcelona, six or seven years ago—”

I waited for no more.

[pg 27]

IV

“I Don't Threaten—I Warn”

In the garden I stopped, hiding away a scrap of a lace handkerchief I had stolen; wondering if I had been altogether wrong, yet not able to see what other course had been open.

Lingering near the window I saw Lady Vale-Avon go to Monica, and hold the girl by the hand while she talked with Carmona. They spoke only a few words. Then the Duke opened the door, and the two ladies went out, Monica not once looking up.

No sooner had they gone than Carmona walked to the window, and seeing me in the glimmering night joined me.

“This is my mother's house,” he said in Spanish.

“And her garden, you would add,” I answered.

“Yes.”

“But there's something here that is mine.”

“There is nothing here that is yours.” His voice, studiously cold at first, warmed with anger.

“It will be mine some day, in spite of—everything.”

“You boast, Marqués de Casa Triana.”

“No. For Lady Monica Vale has promised to marry me.”

Carmona caught his breath on a word by which, if he had not stopped to think, he would have given me the lie. But something restrained him and he laughed instead. “I wouldn't count on the fulfilment of her promise if I were you,” he said. “Lady Monica's a schoolgirl. I would tell you, for your own sake, that the best thing you can do is to forget you ever saw her; but that will be a [pg 28]waste of breath. What I will say is, you'll be wise to leave Biarritz before anything disagreeable happens.”

“I intend to leave Biarritz,” I said quietly.

“I'm glad to hear it.”

“When Lady Monica and her mother leave.”

“You intend to persecute these ladies!”

“Not at all. But when they go to visit the Duchess of Carmona, that will be—the time I shall choose for leaving Biarritz.”

“Who has spoken of such a visit?”

“A person I trust.”

He was silent for a moment, whether in surprise or anger I could not tell. But at last he said, “I'm less well-informed than your friend as to the plans of Lady Vale-Avon and her daughter. They may return to England; they may go to friends in Paris, they may visit my mother. But this doesn't concern strangers like yourself; and my advice to the Marqués de Casa Triana is, whatever happens, keep out of Spain.”

“Do you threaten me?” I asked.

“I don't threaten—I warn.”

“Thanks for your kind intentions. They give me food for thought.”

“All the better. You'll be less likely to forget.”

“I shan't forget,” I answered. “Indeed, I shall profit by your advice.” And with that I walked away, putting on my mask.

As Romeo had not known at what hour he might wish to leave the house of Capulet, he had ordered neither his own motor-car nor a carriage; but luckily a cab was lingering in the neighbourhood on the chance of a fare. I was glad not to walk to my hotel in the guise of Romeo; and I gained my quarters without meeting curious eyes in the corridors.

As I expected, Dick was in our private sitting-room, smoking and reading a novel.

“Well, what luck, friend Romeo?” he asked.

“Luck, and ill luck,” said I. Then I told the story of the evening.

[pg 029] “Humph! you've gone and got yourself into a pretty scrape,” was his comment at the end.

“You call it a ‘scrape’ when by a miracle the sweetest girl alive has fallen in love with you?”

“Just that, if the girl isn't old enough to know her own mind, and has a mother who wouldn't let her know it if she could. You've gone so far now, you'll have to go further—”

“As far as the end of the world, if necessary.”

“Oh! you Latin men, with your eyes of fire, your boiling passions, and your exaggerated expressions! What do we Yankees and other sensible persons see in you?”

“Heaven knows,” said I, shrugging my shoulders.

“I doubt it. Why, in the name of common sense, as you'd got to the age of twenty-seven without bothering about love, couldn't you wait till the age of twenty-seven and a quarter, go quietly over to my country with me, a long sight better than the ‘end of the world,’ and propose to a charming American girl of rational age and plenty of dollars?”

“A rational age?”

“Over eighteen, anyhow. I believe you Latins have a fancy for these little white ingénues, who don't know which side their bread's buttered, or how to say anything but ‘Yes, please,’ and ‘No, thank you.’ When my time comes, the girl must be twenty-two and a good, patriotic American.”

“American girls are fascinating, but I happen to be in love with an English one, and it's her misfortune and mine, not our fault, that she's eighteen instead of twenty-two.”

“A big misfortune. You mustn't kidnap an infant. That's what makes it awkward. As I said, you can't back out now.”

“Not while I live.”

“Don't be so Spanish. But come to think of it, I suppose you can't help that. What do you mean to do next?”

“Watch. And get word to Monica.”

“Angèle de la Mole will do what she can for you.”

“I hope so. Then everything else must depend on the girl.”

[pg 030] Dick's lean, tanned face was half quizzical, half sad.

“Everything else must depend on the girl,” he repeated. “I wonder what would happen if anybody tried to prop up a hundred pound weight against a lilybud?”

[pg 31]

V

A Mystery Concerning a Chauffeur

For many days after this the young King of Spain motored back and forth between San Sebastian and Biarritz to visit the lady of his love; but at last the two Princesses bade good-bye to the Villa Mouriscot, and went to Paris. Lady Vale-Avon and Monica remained; but for the moment the girl was safe from Carmona, for the Duke followed the King to Madrid.

Lovely as Monica was, is, and always will be, and genuinely in love with her as I had no doubt Carmona was, still I began to believe that Dick Waring was right, and that the Duke's desire to win Princess Ena's friend was as much for Court favour as for the girl herself. Several weeks passed, and Monica and her mother continued to be tenants of the Villa Esmeralda. They went out little, except to visit the old Duchess of Carmona, who evidently did all she could to advance her son's interests with invitations to luncheons and dinners; but try as I might I was never able to obtain an interview.

Fortunately for me, Lady Vale-Avon had seen me only in fancy dress; the costume of Romeo, with a ridiculous yellow-brown, wavy wig, upon which the costumier had insisted against my arguments. Now, I blessed him for his obstinacy; for I was able to pass Lady Vale-Avon in the street without being recognized, and once got near enough to slip into Monica's hand a note I had hastily scribbled on the leaf of a note-book.

“Are you willing that I should try my luck again with your mother?” I had written. “If not, will you consent to a [pg 32]runaway marriage with a man who loves you better than his life?”

Next day came an answer through Mademoiselle de la Mole.

Monica begged that I would not speak to her mother. “She fancies that you have gone away,” the girl wrote. “If you came forward I think she would wire the Duke of Carmona, for she writes to him nearly every day as it is; and she would do everything she could to make me marry him at once. Don't hate me for being a coward. I'm not, except with mother. I can't help it with her. She's different from everyone else. I heard the Duchess saying to her yesterday, that if I were to marry a grandee of Spain, I would be made a lady-in-waiting to the Queen instead of maid of honour; so I know what they're thinking of always. But while mother hopes you have given me up, and that I'm quite good, they will perhaps let me alone.

“I wish I dared write to the Princess about you; only, you see, on account of your father and that horrid accident which happened, in Barcelona, she might misunderstand you, and things would be worse than before. But if I find that mother means actually to try and force me, then I will go away with you. Otherwise, I would rather wait, for both our sakes.

“When I go back to England, there are some dear cousins of mine who might help us, but it's no use writing. I would have to see and talk to them myself. Anyway, if I were there they'd manage not to let me be married to a foreigner I hate; and you and I could go on being true to each other for a little while, until everything could be arranged.

“The worst is, mother doesn't mean to go back to England yet. That's what I'm afraid of, and that she has some plan about which she doesn't mean to talk till the last minute. But she hasn't said anything lately about visiting the Duchess of Carmona in Spain, and I hope she's giving it up. As soon as I hear anything definite I'll somehow let you know. I think I can promise that, though it may be difficult, as mother will never let Angèle and me be alone together for a minute if she can help it. The day [pg 33]after the ball we are having a talk in my room when my mother came, and perhaps guessed I had been telling Angèle things. Since then I haven't been allowed to go to Angèle's; and though Angèle comes to see me, mother always makes some excuse for being with us.”

After this letter of Monica's I had at least some idea of how matters stood; and in the circumstances there seemed nothing to do but to be near her, and to wait.

It was not until the latter part of March that the Duke of Carmona came back to his mother's villa at Biarritz.

His arrival was not announced in the local paper, nevertheless I heard of it; and the day after, Mademoiselle de la Mole sent me another letter from Monica, only a few lines, evidently written in great haste.

They were to pay the visit to the Duchess of Carmona in Seville, and were to arrive there in time for the famous ceremonies of Holy Week; that was all she knew. The time of starting was either not decided, or else it was not considered best that she should know too long beforehand.

“I'm miserable about going,” wrote the girl; “but what can I do? I used to think it would be glorious to see Spain, but now I'm frightened. I have a horrible feeling that I shall never come back. I know it's too much to ask, and I don't see how you can do it if I do ask, since I can tell you nothing of our plans; but if only, only, you could keep near me, within call, I should be safe. I suppose it's useless to hope for that? Anyway, whatever happens, I shall always love you.”

To this I wrote an answer, but Angèle feared she might fail in getting it to her friend. The lease of Lady Vale-Avon's Biarritz villa had just expired, and the mother and daughter were moving to the Duchess of Carmona's for a few days. For some reason, the Duchess had not once invited Angèle to come to her house since the ball. She might not be able to see Monica; and it would be very unsafe to trust to the post.

It was on the evening of the day on which I had this news [pg 34]that my chauffeur knocked at the door of our sitting-room at the hotel.

“I thought,” said he, “I'd better tell your lordship something which has just happened. It may be of importance; it may be of none.”

Now I may as well explain that Peter Ropes is no common chauffeur. He is the son of the old coachman who served my father for many years in England; was groom to my first pony; went abroad with me as handy man; was with me through most of my adventures; when I took up motoring, volunteered to go into a factory and thoroughly learn the gentle art of chauffeuring; and at this time understood an automobile, and loved it, as he understood and loved a horse; he is of my age almost to the day; and I suppose will be with me in some capacity or other till one of us dies. He has a brown face, which might have been carved from a piece of oak; the eyes of a soldier; and never utters a word more than he must.

“You said I could go to the pelota this afternoon,” he continued. “When I came back I went to the garage, and found a strange chauffeur examining your Gloria. I stood at a distance, behind the King of England's car, and watched what he would do. M. Levavasseur, the proprietor of the garage, came in just then, and I inquired in a low voice who the fellow was. He didn't know; but the man had asked for Mr. Trevenna's chauffeur, saying, when he heard I was out, that he was a friend of mine. I gave Levavasseur the hint to keep quiet, and got out of the way myself. Presently the chauffeur walked over to Levavasseur, and said, in French, that he wouldn't wait any longer.”

“Well, what then, Ropes?” I asked.

“He went away, and I went after him. He didn't see me, and I don't believe he would have known me from Adam if he had. He stopped at another garage, and I thought best not to go in there. But I waited, and after a while a very dark, tall gentleman, who looked Spanish, walked into the garage. Five minutes later he and the chauffeur came out together. They parted at the entrance, [pg 35]and it was the gentleman I followed this time. He went to a large, handsome villa; and a person I met told me it was the Duchess of Carmona's house. That is the reason I thought the thing important.”

“But why, exactly?” I persisted, guessing what Ropes would say.

“Because I think the gentleman was the Duke of Carmona.”

“And if he were?”

“I've heard gossip that he's anxious to stand well with the King of Spain. It occurred to me he might have some political interest in trying to learn the real name of Mr. Trevenna, if you pardon my having such a thought. He might have sent his chauffeur to look at your car, and make a report; and if he did, whatever the reason was, it would mean no good to your lordship. I thought you ought to know, and be upon your guard, in case of anything happening.”

“Thank you,” I said. “You're right to speak, and it may be you've done me an invaluable service.”

Ropes beamed; but having said all he had to say, another word would have been a waste of good material, which he was not the man to squander.

[pg 36]

VI

Puzzle: Find the Car

“What do you think it means?” asked Dick, when the chauffeur had gone.

“It's just struck me, it may mean that Carmona intends to slip away with his guests in his new automobile, and that he wanted to find out something about my car, what it was like, and so on, in case I got wind of the idea, and followed.”

“The identical thing struck me. He wouldn't go spying himself, but sent his chauffeur, a new importation, probably, to have a look at the Gloria and describe it. I wonder how he heard you had one.”

“Easy enough to do that. Of course he's found out somehow, perhaps through employing a detective, that Chris Trevenna and Casa Triana are one man. He can't make much use of the knowledge to bother me on this side the frontier, but—”

“Yes; a big but.”

“It seems pretty certain that his own car must have come, or be coming here, and that he means to use it going into Spain, or he wouldn't have developed this sudden interest in mine.”

“It looks like it. Now he knows, if a dark blue Gloria crosses his path, it's the car of the pursuing lover, and—”

“I was just thinking that a dark blue Gloria will not cross his path.”

“You don't mean—”

“I mean that it won't be prudent for either Casa Triana's or Chris Trevenna's car to follow his, wherever he means to go.”

[pg 037] “What, you'll give up—”

“Is it likely?”

“You're getting beyond me.”

“What I want is to stay with you, in your car.”

“Wish I had one!” said Dick.

“You're going to have the loan of one. Would a grey or a red car suit you best?”

“I see. Red, please. They say red paint dries quickest.”

We both laughed.

“Your red car must have new lamps,” I went on, “and a new number, and any other little things that can be put on in a hurry. And you'd better get a passport if you haven't one. Gentlemen touring in foreign lands are sometimes subjected to cross-questionings which might be inconvenient unless they've plenty of red tape up their sleeves.”

“I'll lay in a stock. How would you like me to be the accredited correspondent, for the Spanish wedding festivities, of a newspaper or two?”

“Rattling good idea. Could you work it?”

“Easy as falling off a log, or puncturing a tyre. I'll arrange by telegraph, London and New York.”

“Grand old chap.”

“Thanks. Better wait till I've done something. What about your part in the show?”

“A humble friend, accompanying the important newspaper correspondent in his travels.”

“That's all right. But the Trevenna business is played out.”

“A new travelling name's as easy to fit as a travelling-coat.”

“Not quite, unless you can match it with a new travelling face.”

“Luckily Carmona knows Romeo's face better than mine. And, anyhow, a motoring get-up can be next door to a disguise.”

“That's true. Behind goggles Apollo hasn't much advantage over Apollyon, and you can develop a moustache. Yes. I think we can work it as far as that goes. But one's always heard that Spanish roads are impossible.”

[pg 038] “They'll be no worse for us than for Carmona,” I argued. “Besides, most of the best known books about Spain are out of date. The King has made motoring fashionable lately, and there must have been some attempts to get the roads into passable condition.”

“I happened to hear an American who's here with a sixty horse-power Panhard, wanting to go to Seville, say to another fellow that he'd been warned he couldn't get beyond Madrid.”

“I've never bothered much about warnings in my life. I've generally gone ahead, and found out things for myself.”

“We'll continue on the same lines. And, anyhow, wherever we go, we're sure of a leader; our friend the enemy.”

It was next in order to find out whether the Duke really had brought an automobile to Biarritz; but try as we might, we could learn nothing. Inquiries were made at the railway stations, both at Bayonne and Biarritz, as to whether an automobile had lately been shipped through; but as it happened, no car of any description had arrived by rail in either direction during the last fortnight.

All the principal garages of Bayonne and Biarritz were visited also, in the hope of finding a mysterious car which might be the Duke of Carmona's; but there was not one of which we could not trace the ownership. We then sent to Bordeaux, and even to St. Jean de Luz; but in both cases our errand was vain. If Carmona had an automobile in the South of France, it was well hidden.

As for the chauffeur who had inspected my car, and afterwards met Carmona at another garage, he had disappeared, apparently, into thin air.

Nevertheless, Dick and I formed a theory that the new automobile, of which we had heard so many rumours, was actually in Biarritz; that it had been driven into the town after dark, and was now being kept by some friend of Carmona's in a private garage. And if we were right in our conjectures, we felt we might take it as a sure sign that the Duke was not only planning an important [pg 39]tour, but was not forgetting a detail of precaution which could prevent my learning his intentions.

As we could not set a watch upon the chauffeur, we set a watch upon the Duke; and it was Ropes who, with considerable relish, undertook the task. I did not wish to bring a stranger into the affair; and Ropes I could trust as I trusted myself. Therefore Ropes it was who unobtrusively dogged Carmona's footsteps from the time the Duke went out in the morning, up to the time he went in again at night.

Meanwhile, Dick took steps to become correspondent for The Daily Despatch of London, and The New York Recorder, the editors of which papers he knew personally. He spent a great deal of money in wiring long messages, but his reward was success, and, as he said, he was “proud of his job,” which he intended to carry out as faithfully as if writing impressions for newspapers were the business of his life.

Also, we got the car repainted; bought lamps of a different sort; ordered side baskets to be attached, of a red to match the new colour; had Dick Waring's monogram, in execrable taste, put on the doors; while last and most important change of all, from being number A12,901, the automobile became, illegally but convincingly, M14,317. Cunningest device of all, Ropes changed the wheel-caps of my Gloria for those of a Frenzel, as like a Gloria as a Fiat is like a Mercédès; so that only an expert of much experience would know that the car was not a Frenzel.

A quick dryer was used, and in two days we were ready for anything. I still hoped for a letter from Monica, with some hints as to her mother's plans, but nothing came; and when we had had a blank day, with no news of activity in the enemy's camp, it was a relief to have Ropes arrive at the hotel in the morning just as I was dressed.

I knew the moment I saw his face that something exciting had happened.

“The Duke's gone, my lord,” he reported; “gone in a dark [pg 40]grey, covered car; I couldn't get near enough to make sure what it was, but it looks like a Lecomte. He's this moment got off.”

“Not alone?”

“No, my lord. I'll tell you exactly what took place. I was at the window in the little room I hired over a shop three days ago, in sight of the entrance gates of the Villa Isabella. It was just seven o'clock this morning when a smart, big grey car drove in, might be a forty horse, and of the Lecomte type. The chauffeur wore goggles, but his figure was like the fellow's who came the other day to our garage. About half an hour later, out slipped the car again, the Duke driving, a lady sitting beside him, two other ladies in the tonneau, the chauffeur at the Duke's feet, and a good deal of luggage on the roof. At the gate they turned as if to go to San Sebastian; and I came to let you know.”

“That's right. Get ready at once for a start, and have the car here as soon as you can.”

“Car's ready now, my lord, and so am I.”

“Good. But don't ‘my lord’ me. Now that I'm Mr. George Smith that's even more important to remember than in Trevenna days. And don't forget that the car's Mr. Waring's car.”

“I won't forget, sir.”

He was off to the garage, and I was knocking at Dick's door.

Dick was tying his necktie. “Ready to start in five minutes,” said he.

“How did you guess what was up?”

“Your face, d'Artagnan.”

“Why d'Artagnan? Haven't I a large enough variety of names already?”

“I've selected one suitable for the situation. D'Artagnan took upon himself a mission. So have you; and you'll have as many difficulties to overcome before you fulfil it, if you do, as he had.”

“Nonsense. We're starting out to keep in touch with another party of motorists.”

“In a country forbidden to one of us.”

“That one can look out for himself. If a lady in another motor [pg 41]should need someone to stand by her, we're to be on the spot to stand by, that's all.”

“Yes; that's all,” said Dick, laughing. “And all that d'Artagnan had to do was to get hold of a few diamond studs which a lady wanted to wear at a ball. Sounds simple, eh? But d'Artagnan had some fun on the way, and I'd bet the last dollar in my pile we will. Hang this necktie! There; I'm ready. Have we time for coffee and a crust?”

[pg 42]

VII

The Impudence of Showing a Handkerchief

Fifteen minutes later we were off.

I love driving my car, as I love the breath of life, and I'm conceited enough to fancy that no one else, not even Ropes, can get out of her what I can. Still, this was not destined to be precisely a pleasure trip, and prudence bade me give the helm to Dick. He is a good enough driver; and the car was his car now; I was but an insignificant passenger, with a case of visiting cards in his pocket, newly engraved with the name of Mr. George Smith. I sat on the front seat beside Dick, however, silently criticising his every move; Ropes was in the tonneau; such luggage as we had, on top.

It was scarcely eight o'clock, and there was so little traffic in the town that we did not need to trouble about a legal limit. We slipped swiftly along the rough white road to the railway station, past large villas and green lawns, and took the sharp turn to the right that leads out from the pleasant land of France straight to romantic Spain, the country of my dreams. We sped past houses that looked from their deep sheltering woods upon a silver lake, and away in the distance we caught glimpses of the sea. Before us were graceful, piled mountains, the crenelated mass of Les Trois Couronnes glittering with wintry diamonds. Against the morning sky, stood up, clear and cold, the cone of far La Rune.

Looking ahead, in my ears sang the song of my blood, sweet with hope, as the name of the girl I love and the land I love, mingled together in music.

Gaining the first outskirts of straggling St. Jean de Luz my [pg 43]eyes and Dick's fell at the same time upon something before us; a big grey automobile, its roof piled with luggage, stationary by the roadside, a chauffeur busy jacking up the driving wheels, a tall man standing to watch the work, his hands in the pockets of his fur coat. Instantly Dick slowed down our car, to lean out as we came within speaking distance, while I sat still, secure from recognition behind elaborately hideous goggles.

“Is there anything we can do?” asked Dick with the generosity of an automobilist in full tide of fortune to another in ill fortune. I noticed as he spoke, that he made his American accent as marked as possible; so marked, that it was almost like hoisting the stars and stripes over the transformed and repainted Gloria.

“No, thank you,” said Carmona; for it was he who stood in the road looking on while his chauffeur worked. He had glanced up with anxiety and vexation on his ungoggled, dark face, at the first sound of an approaching car, and I knew well what thought sprang into his head. But a red car, with an American driving, was not what he had half expected to see. He was visibly relieved; nevertheless, he was slow enough in answering to bring us to a standstill, while he peered at our wheel-caps.

The deceitful name, glittering up to his eyes, so evidently reassured him that a temptation seized me, and I yielded without a struggle.

I had come prepared for a quick signal to Monica whenever an opportunity should arise, and, as I was anxious to let her know that she was not unprotected, it seemed to me that the first chance of doing so was better than the second.

In an inner breast pocket of my coat I had the lace handkerchief which I had stolen on the night of the ball. As Dick questioned Carmona, and Carmona answered, I flashed out the wisp of lace and passed it across my lips, not turning to look full at the slim, grey-coated figure on the front seat, yet conscious by a side glance that a veiled face regarded us.

What I did was done so quickly, that I think it would have [pg 44]passed unnoticed by the Duke; but Monica, taken completely by surprise, bent suddenly forward; then, remembering the need for caution, hurriedly leaned back against the cushions.

Carmona caught her nervous movement, saw how self-consciously, almost rigidly, she sat when she had recovered herself, and, suspicion instantly alert, turned a searchlight gaze on us.

The lace handkerchief had vanished. I was sitting indifferently, with arms folded, my interest concentrated upon the busy chauffeur. Still I felt there was no detail of my figure and motoring clothes that Carmona was not noting as he explained to Dick the nature of his mishap.

“A simple puncture,” he said. “And we have all necessary means to mend it, thank you.”

Dick and I lifted our caps to the ladies and went our way; but it was not until we had passed the charming Renaissance house where Louis Quatorze was born, that Waring made any comment on the incident.

“If that Moor-faced chap isn't on to the game, he's getting mighty ‘warm,’ as the children say,” he remarked dryly.

“He can't possibly be certain,” said I. “Even if he saw my face, he couldn't swear to identifying it, as the only sight he ever had of me was in that asinine, yellow Romeo wig. Besides, Romeo had no moustache, and, thanks to your advice, I have. It's the one thing that's conspicuous under the goggles.”

“A sort of ‘coming event casting its shadow before.’ I didn't say he knew. I said he guessed. See here, while he's waiting for his tyre, could we wire from this town to the frontier in time to have you stopped?”

“We ought to get there before any telegram he could send,” said I, hopefully. “However, there'll be a lot of formalities at the custom-house. They might catch us before we finished. But, uncertain as he must be, it would hardly be worth his while—”

“I wouldn't bet much on that,” said Dick.

“Let's rush it,” said I.

[pg 045] “Too risky. You'd feel such a limp ass to be detained by a fat policeman at the door of Spain, while Carmona and Lady Monica went through, and disappeared.”

“I'd shoot the fat policeman first.”

“There you are, being Spanish again, just when you ought to develop a little horse-sense.”

This put me on my mettle, and in two minutes I had thought out a plan, while Dick whistled and reflected.

It was rather an odd plan, and could only be carried out by the aid of another. But that other had never failed me yet, when loyalty or devotion were needed; and I had not got out half the suggestion when he understood all, and begged to do what I had hardly liked to ask.

We took exactly eight minutes, by Dick's watch, in making arrangements to meet an emergency which I hoped might not arise if our speed were good and our luck held.

Already Hendaye, the last French town, was but just beyond our sight. We ran through it at high speed, passed on through little Béhobie; and next moment our tyres were rolling through a brown mixture of French and Spanish mud on the international bridge that crosses the swirling Bidasoa. We had passed from Gaul to Iberia. At the central iron lamp-post, carrying on one side the “R.F.” of France, on the other the Royal Arms of Spain, I lifted my cap in salutation to my native land, just where, had I been an Englishman, I should have lifted it to memories of grand old Wellington.

The broad river was rushing, green and swift, down to Fuenterrabia and the sea, eddying past the little Ile des Faisans, where so much history has been made; where Cardinals treated for royal marriages; where Francis the First, a prisoner, was exchanged for his two sons. We were across the dividing water now, in Irun, and on Spanish soil. High-collared Spanish soldiers lounging by their sentry boxes, looked keenly at us, but made no move, little guessing that the accused bomb-thrower of Barcelona was driving past them through this romantic gate to Spain. [pg 46]We turned abruptly to the right, and, hoping still to escape trouble, pulled up at the custom-house.

To hurry a Spanish official, I had often heard my father say, in old days, is a thing impossible, and we avoided an air of anxiety. The three men in the big red car appeared to desire nothing better than to linger in the society of the douaniers. Nevertheless, the chauffeur was as brisk in his movements as he dared to be.

He it was who jumped from the tonneau, and in passable Spanish asked our inquisitor which, if any, of our suit-cases he wished to open. At the same instant a propitiatory cigarette was offered and accepted.

Carefully the overcoated man selected with his eye a piece of luggage on the car roof. Luck was with us. It was the one easiest to unlock.

In the twinkling of an eye (an American, not a Spanish eye), the thing was down and in the office. The douanier was about to inspect, in his leisured way, when a peasant entered with some bags to be weighed.

Naturally the official fell into chat with the new-comer, and it was necessary to remind him that we had the right of precedence. Every moment was of importance, for already there was time for a telegram to have arrived. Presently there would be time for its instructions to be acted on as well. And at this moment I realized, as I had not fully realized before, all that it would mean to me of humiliation and defeat to fail ignominiously on the threshold of my adventure.

It was hard to show no impatience as the douanier's lazy, cigarette-stained hand wandered among the contents of the suit-case. When any article puzzled him, he paused; another precious minute gone. But eventually, having had a safety-razor explained, he was satisfied with the inspection of the luggage, and indicated that it might be replaced. Then came the question of the deposit of money for the car, on entering Spain.

Very carefully did the imperturbable official examine each Spanish bank-note we tendered; laboriously did he make out [pg 47]the receipt. Had he meant to detain us, his movements, his words, could not have been more deliberate. How I had longed to hear again the Spanish language spoken by Spaniards in Spain, yet how little was I able to appreciate the fulfilment of my long-cherished wish! At last, however, every formality was complied with, and we were free to go.

With all speed we took our man at his word. The leather-coated, leather-legginged chauffeur set the engine's heart going in time with his own, flung himself into the tonneau, and had not shut the door when Waring slipped in the clutch, muttering “Hooray!”

Another second and we should have been beyond recall; but hardly was the brake off than it had to go crashing on again to avoid running over a sergeant and two soldiers who rushed up and sprang in front of us, puffing with unwonted haste.

In his hand the sergeant held an open telegram.

“You speak Spanish?” he panted.

“A little,” said Dick. “French better.”

“I have no French, señor,” replied the sergeant, “But my business is not so much with you as with this gentleman,” he glanced at the telegram, “in the grey coat with the fur collar, the grey cap, the goggles in a grey felt mask, the small dark moustache, the grey buckskin gloves.” (Carmona had noticed everything.) “Our instructions are to prevent the Marqués de Casa Triana from going into Spain.”

“Casa Triana? What do you mean?” cried Dick. Then he laughed. “Is the person you're talking about a Spaniard?”

“He is, señor.”

Dick laughed a great deal more. “Well, I guess you'll have to look somewhere else. There's a mistake. The gentleman in the grey coat and all the other grey things has hardly enough Spanish to know what you're driving at.”

The sergeant shrugged his shoulders and looked determined. “There is no mistake in my instructions, señor. I am sorry, but it is my duty to detain that gentleman. If there is an error there will be apologies.”

[pg 048] “I should say there jolly well was an error,” sputtered Dick, in his wild combination of Spanish and English and American. “George, show your card. He thinks you're a Spaniard, who's ‘wanted.’ ”

The gentleman in the grey coat showed the visiting cards of Mr. George Smith, and the Spanish soldier examined them gloomily. “Anybody might have these,” said he, half to us, half to a group of his countrymen. “Señor, I must reluctantly ask you to descend and to come with me. It will be much better to do so quietly.”

“Of all the monstrous indignities,” shouted Dick. “I'm a newspaper correspondent on a special detail. I'll wire the American minister in Madrid, and the English Ambassador too. I'll—”

But the gentleman in the grey coat had obeyed the sergeant. He had also taken off his goggles.

“It will be all right in a few hours, or a few days,” said he in English. “You must go on. Don't worry about me.”

“Go on without you?” echoed Dick, breaking again into astonishing Spanish for the benefit of the official. “Well, if you really don't mind, as I'm in the dickens of a hurry. You can follow by train, you know, as soon as you've proved to these blunderers that you're George Smith.”

“If you are Señor George Smith, you will be free as soon as the photograph of the Marqués de Casa Triana has been sent on by the police at Madrid,” said the sergeant. “If not—” he did not finish his sentence; but the break was significant. And the soldiers closed in to separate the alleged George Smith from his companions of the car, lest at the last moment they should attempt a rescue.

“We'll make them sorry for this, George,” said Dick. “But as we really can't do much for you here, we'll get on somewhere else, where we can.”

“I must ask also for the name of the owner of this automobile, and for that of his chauffeur,” insisted the sergeant, “before I can let you go.”

[pg 049] “Oh, all right,” said Dick, crossly, producing his passport, and cards with the names of the papers for which he had engaged to correspond. “Ropes, fork out your credentials.”

The chauffeur brought forth his French papers, and pointed to the name of Peter Ropes. The sergeant industriously wrote down everything in his note-book, a greasy and forbidding one.

“It is satisfactory,” he said with dignity; “you can proceed, señores.”

The engine had not been stopped during the scene; and as the gentleman in the grey coat was marched off to the guard-house with a jostling Spanish crowd at his heels, the red car in which he had lately been a passenger slipped away and left him behind.

Through the streets of Irun it passed at funeral pace, as if in respect and regret for a friend who was lost; but once out in the green, undulating country beyond, it put on a great spurt of speed, after the chauffeur had scrambled into the front seat.

“Great Scott, but I'm as hot as if I'd come out of a Turkish bath,” growled Dick.

“It was a warm ten minutes,” said I. “Poor old Ropes—bless him!” And I sent back a sigh of gratitude to the staunch friend in my grey overcoat, cap, goggles, and gloves, to whose loyalty I owed freedom.

[pg 50]

VIII

Over the Border

Here I was in Spain, my Spain—thanks to Ropes; and, again thanks to him, probably out of danger from Carmona's suspicions for some time to come, barring accidents.

He would make inquiries at Irun when he arrived there, and learning that the obnoxious person had been detained according to information received from him, would pass on triumphantly. Even when fate brought his car and ours together, as I hoped it often would, a sight of the two remaining travellers, the American automobilist and his hideously-goggled chauffeur, would cause him amusement rather than uneasiness.

He would say to himself that, so far as he was concerned, no harm had been done, even if no good had been accomplished; for if the banished passenger were indeed Casa Triana, he had done well to get rid of him. If, after all, his quick suspicion had been too far-fetched, and he had caused the arrest of an innocent tourist, that tourist would never know to whom he owed his adventure, and would be powerless to trouble the Duke of Carmona. As for Ropes, when the photograph taken of me years ago by the police in Barcelona should reach the police in Irun, it would be seen that two young men who are twenty-seven, tall, slim, and have dark moustaches, do not necessarily resemble each other in other details. Mr. George Smith would be generously pardoned for having occupied the attention of the police in place of the Marqués de Casa Triana, and he would be free to rejoin his fellow-travellers.

[pg 051] During the three or four minutes of discussion we had had before making the “quick change” which transformed master into man, we had arranged to communicate with Ropes by means of advertisements in La Independencia. We would forward money in advance to that journal, enough to pay for several advertisements, and could then telegraph our whereabouts at the last minute, whenever the movements of Carmona's car gave us our cue.

This was the best arrangement we could make in a hurry, and when we had time to reflect, it did not seem to us that, in the circumstances, we could have done better.

And so, come what might, the outlaw had crossed the border, and was in the forbidden country of his hopes and heart.

In spite of compunction on Ropes' account, I was happy, desperately happy. I was free to watch over the girl I loved and who loved me; and I was drinking in the air of the fatherland. It did actually seem sweeter and more life-giving than in any other part of the world.

Dick laughed when I mentioned this impression, and said I ought to try the climate of America before I judged; but he admitted the extraordinary, yet almost indefinable individuality of the landscape as well as the architecture, which struck the eye instantly on crossing the frontier.

It was easy to classify as peculiarly Spanish the old Basque churches, the long, dark lines of sombre houses bristling with little balconies, and sparkling with projecting windows, whose intricate glass panes gave upward currents of air in hot weather. All this, and much more was obvious in town or village; but Dick and I argued over the distinctive features of the landscape without fathoming the mystery which set it apart from other landscapes.

What was so peculiar? There were hedges, and poplars, and other trees which we had seen a thousand times elsewhere. There was a pretty, though not extravagantly pretty, switchback road of fair surface stretching before us, roughly parallel with [pg 52]the sea, giving glimpses here and there of landlocked harbours with colliers and trampships at anchor. There was a far background of snow mountains and a changing foreground of spring grass and spring blossoms; interlacing branches embroidered with new leaves of that pinky yellow which comes before the summer green.

There ought to have been nothing remarkable, save for the moving figures which here and there rendered it pictorial; dark, upstanding men in red waistcoats, driving donkeys; velvet-eyed girls, with no covering for their heads but their shining crowns of jet-black hair, and none at all for their tanned feet and ankles, though they carried shoes in their hands; black-robed priests; brown-robed monks; smart officers; soldiers with stiff, glittering shakos, and green gloves; oxen with pads of wool on their classic, biscuit-coloured heads. Nevertheless, Dick agreed with me in finding the landscape remarkable.

At last we began to wonder if the difference did not lie in colouring and atmosphere. The sky effects were radiant enough to set the soul of an artist singing, because of the opal lights, the violet banks of cloud with ragged, crystal fringes of rain, the diamond gleams struck out from snow peaks; and yet, despite this ethereal radiance, there was a strange solemnity about the wide reaches of Spanish country, a rich gloom that brooded over the landscape with its thoughtful colouring, never for a moment brilliant, never gay.

“It's painted glass-window country,” I said. “Old glass, painted by some famous artist who died in the fourteenth century, and a little faded—no, subdued by time.”

“You've hit it,” said Dick. “There is an old-glass-window-in-a-dim-cathedral look about the sky. It gives one a religious kind of feeling, or anyway, as if you'd be thrown out of the picture if you were too frivolous.”

“I feel far from frivolous,” said I. “But I'm excited. Look here; we'll be in San Sebastian and out of San Sebastian soon, if we keep on. But we mustn't keep on; for if we do we may miss [pg 53]the other car, and then I should be as badly off as if I were in Ropes' place at Irun.”

“We know they're going to Seville,” said Dick.

“It's a long cry to Seville. And Carmona may mean to travel by way of Madrid, through Vitoria and Burgos, or he may mean to take a road which Levavasseur in Biarritz told me was better, steering for Seville via Santander and Salamanca. It depends on whether he wants to stop at the capital, I suppose. Anyhow, as he's unconsciously making our arrangements as well as his own, there's nothing for it but we must halt until he passes and gives us our lead.”

“It's all the same to me whether we halt or scorch,” said Dick. “I've got more time than anything else. This is your circus; I'm only the ‘prisoner's best friend,’ as they say in a court-martial. But if we should go to Burgos, I've got an errand to do, if you don't mind.”

“Why should I mind?” I asked.

“It's to call on a young lady.”

“You never mentioned having friends there.”

“She's Angèle de la Mole's friend. All I know is that she's Irish, name O'Donnel; that she's got a harmless, necessary father, and a brother in whom my prophetic soul tells me Angèle is interested; that Papa and Daughter are visiting Brother, who's in the Spanish army for some weird unexplained reason, and stationed in Burgos. I promised to take a package with a present from Angèle to Miss O'Donnel if we stopped long enough at Burgos, or, if we didn't go there, to post it. I've also a letter introducing us to Papa. Angèle said it was possible he might have known your father, so probably he's lived a good deal in Spain at one time or another, or the idea wouldn't have occurred to her. She thought, if we went to see the O'Donnels, Papa might be useful in case you told him who you really were; but I wasn't to bother you about going out of your way for their sakes; which is the reason I didn't mention them until now, when you spoke of Burgos.”

[pg 054] “If Carmona goes in that direction, he's almost certain to spend the night there,” said I, on the strength of such knowledge as much study of Spanish road-maps had given me. “In that case, we shall spend the night too, and there'll be time for you to call on your O'Donnels; but as for me, I don't know that it would be wise to take extraneous people into my confidence. And, if it won't disappoint you, I hope we won't have to go by Burgos, although they say the cathedral's one of the finest in the world, for if the road's as bad as rumour paints it, it must be abominable.”

“Well, you've got your springs bound up with a million yards of stout cord, on purpose; and those extra buffers of India rubber Ropes put on to keep the tyres from grinding against the mud guards; so we ought to get off pretty well at worst,” remarked Dick. “As for me, I shall feel defrauded if the car doesn't soon begin to bound like a chamois from one frightful obstacle to another, along the surface of the road, such ghastly things have been dinned into my ears about Castile and La Mancha. So far, we've nothing to complain of, and have been on velvet, compared to some of the pavé atrocities one remembers in Belgium and northern France.”

“I daresay we shall come to the chamois act yet,” said I. “But, so far, we're still in the heart of civilization. Here's San Sebastian, and here's a café close to where Carmona must pass, so let's stop and lie in wait.”

[pg 55]

IX

A Stern Chase

We were on the outskirts of San Sebastian, and to reach the café we turned off the main road and ran the car into a side street. There, without being ourselves conspicuous, we could see all that passed along the road beyond. We had some vermouth, sitting at a little iron table outside the café door, to excuse our presence. Every moment we expected to see the Duke's car shoot by, but time went on, and it did not come. We finished our first edition of vermouth and had a second, with which we toyed and did not drink, by way of keeping our place.

Had they punctured another tyre? Had Carmona stopped in Irun, and had any mischance occurred there which might, after all, put the police on my track?

Dick and I were beginning to get restive, and question each other with raised eyebrows, when the big grey automobile charged past the end of our street. Not a head in the car turned in our direction; and laying a couple of pesetas on the table we sprang to the manning of our own road-ship. So quick was our start that, when we spun out into the road, there was our leader still within sight.

I had heard my father speak often of San Sebastian, which, situated in the heart of the Basque country, had been the great Carlist centre, and even when Carlist hopes died, retained most stoutly the Carlist traditions. But, Carlist as he was at heart till the day of his death, he could not fail to appreciate the tact of Queen Cristina, by whose wish a royal summer villa had risen [pg 56]over the waters of the bay. Owing to this stroke of clever policy, a poor and discontented town was transformed into the most fashionable watering place of Spain, and surely if slowly disaffection merged into prosperous self-satisfaction.

Because of stories I had heard my father tell, I should have liked to explore the place; but the one thing of importance now was to keep the grey car in sight until we could be certain which road it would take; so there was time only for brief glances to right and left as we flashed on.

Through streets with high modern houses, more Parisian than Spanish, we came at last upon a broad boulevard that led us by the sea. There had been a picture at home of the deep, shell-like bay, guarded by the imposing headlands of Monte Urgull and Monte Igueldo, the scene of much fighting in the Carlist war. The royal palace, Villa Miramar, was new to me save for the many photographs I had seen of it in Biarritz; but we had no more than a glimpse of the unpretending red brick house on the hill, before we swept through a tunnel that pierced a rocky headland, and came out into open country.

Now our progress developed into a stern chase. By a wrong turn in a San Sebastian street we lost the car ahead for a few moments, but beyond the town, where mud, fresh after a recent shower, lay inch thick on the road, we came upon the track of the flying foe.

There was the trail of the “pneus” as clear to read as a written message, and we followed, relieved of doubt.

On, on we went towards the south, and the mountains of Navarre, and my mind was free enough from strain at last to exult in each new glimpse of the land for which I longed.

Ever since I was old enough to read, I had steeped myself in the history and legend of my own country. I knew all its wars, and where they were fought; I knew the names of the towns and villages, insignificant in themselves, perhaps, made famous by great victories or defeats; and there was time to think of them now, as we passed along the way the heroes of the Peninsular [pg 57]War had taken; but there was no time to linger over landmarks, not even at Hernani, where De Lacy Evans' British legion was shattered by the Carlist army in 1836, and where, in the church, we might have seen the tomb of that Spanish soldier who, at Pavia, took prisoner Francis I.

Rain fell in swift, fierce downpourings, but left us dry under the cover of our car; and as we sped on, sudden gleams of sunlight shining on the wet stone pavements of small brown villages, turned the streets to glittering silver; while beyond, the trees sprayed gold like magic fountains against the white sheen of far snow-peaks.

Thus we ran up the winding road by the river Urumea, worming our way deep into the heart of the mountains; climbing ever higher with a wider view unfolding to our eyes—a view as new, as strange to me as to Dick Waring. And yet I felt at home with it, as if I had known it always.

As we ascended, the roads did what they could to deserve their evil reputation. The rain of a few days ago had been snow in the mountains. The surface of the road became like glue, and despite non-skidding bands, and Waring's careful steering, the car declared a sporting tendency to waltz. Presently the glue liquefied. We were speeding through sheets of yellow soup, which spouted from our pneus in two great curving waves, spattering from head to foot the few wayfarers we met. Down the front glass coursed a cataract of mud, and Waring could steer only by looking out sideways. Thrown up by the steering-wheels, the yellow torrent thudded on the roof, so that we were driving under a flying arch of liquid Spanish earth.

With the approach to a town, however, the way improved. The place was Tolosa, and at the sound of our motor in the distance, a cry of “Automovile, automovile,” came shrilly from a score of childish throats. Even the grown-ups rushed out, and were far more excited than we should have expected in this motor-frequented part of Spain between Biarritz and Madrid. In a French town of the same size scarcely a head would be turned [pg 58]if an automobile passed; here people were as pleased as if we had been a circus, though only a few moments before they must have had the joy of seeing Carmona's car go by.

“If it's like this in the north, what must it be south of Madrid?” said I. “Here they're all wonderfully good-natured; delighted with us in towns and villages—I believe they'd pay to see us if they had to!—the road-menders give military salutes, and even the men whose mules and donkeys are frightened grin as they cover up the silly beasts' faces with their shawls.”

“That's because we behave like decent human beings instead of marble-hearted scorpions,” said Dick, with an originality of simile which he cultivates. “When we see that we're frightening anything we slow down, slip out the clutch, and glide so stealthily by that the creature gets no excuse for hysterics. I used to think before you taught me to drive, and I had the experience and the responsibility myself, that you wasted time grovelling to animal prejudices; but I've changed my mind. I've learned there's no fun to be got out of pig-selfishness on the road, and leaving a trail of distress behind.”

“If you hadn't come to feel that, I couldn't have made over my car to you,” said I. “Road brutality would be peculiarly brutal in Spain, where motoring's a new sport, and peasants must be made accustomed to it. Every motorist who slows down for frightened animals, or gets out to help, is paving the way for future motorists.”

“Somehow I don't believe Carmona'll lay much pavement for us,” said Dick, chuckling.

“Monica won't stand it if he doesn't,” said I. “He's got her sitting beside him, the beggar; and it's his métier to please her.”

We had lost the trail of the pneus, but as the country changed we picked it up again. We were among trees now, and the mountain sides were green with oak and poplar, though as we dropped the landscape darkened into desolation. The bleak corner of the world towards which we were speeding had that formless, [pg 59]featureless look which one sees on common faces, as if it had been shaken together carelessly by the great Creator in an absent-minded moment.

No scenery can be unattractive to a motorist while his car goes well, and the sweet wind flutters against his face; but even I had to admit that this country—illumined only by snow mountains walling the horizon—would be irredeemable in dead summer heats.

My map, which I consulted as Dick drove, said that we had passed out of Navarre into Alava; and suddenly I noticed that we had crossed the watershed, for the bright streams, instead of running down to the Bay of Biscay, were spinning silver threads towards the Ebro, on the way to tumble into the Mediterranean by Tarragona.

Here and there my longing for the strange and picturesque was gratified by the tragic grace of a tall, ruined watch-tower crowning a desolate hill, a vivid reminder of days when red fire-signals flashed from hill to hill to call good Christian men to arms against the Moors. Sometimes creamy billows of Pyrenean sheep surged round our car, graceful and beautiful creatures with streaming banners of wool, and faces only less intelligent than those of the grey dog that rallied them to order, and the brown shepherd in fluttering garments of red and blue.

The farther south we came, the darker grew the mild-eyed oxen our automobile frightened. At Biarritz and beyond they were pale biscuit-coloured; here, the sun seemed to have baked them to a richer brown.

Nevertheless, that sun had no warm welcome for us to-day. We were nipped by the bitter wind, which struck us the more coldly as we were hungry; and about two o'clock we were not sorry to see in the middle of a wide-stretching plain, the Concha de Alava—a large town which we knew to be Vitoria.

Luncheon there might be counted upon. It was too chilly for a picnic meal to be feasible with ladies, therefore Carmona's car must stop for an hour or two, and it was clear now that he [pg 60]would go by way of Burgos; consequently, it was on the cards that Angèle de la Mole's letter would be delivered by hand.

We sneaked stealthily into Vitoria, glancing furtively about for a large grey Lecomte; but it was not long before we caught sight of it in the distance, in the main street, and drawn up before the principal hotel.

I would have given a good deal if I could have got word to Monica; for, even if she had happened to see the red car following since Irun, she was probably miserable in the thought that I had been turned back at the door of Spain.

Of course, in the fear of disgusting her, Carmona might have kept the curtain down on the little drama which he had stage-managed. Concealment would have been difficult, however, as he must have signed his telegram to the police; and on arriving at the custom-house, some of the facts would have been liable to leak out in Monica's hearing.

It was hard that she should be distressed for my sake as well as her own; but my first fencing bout with the Duke had warned me against rashness, and I decided that nothing could be done till we reached Burgos. There, somehow, I would find a way to let her know that it was I, and not the Duke, who had come out best.

Before joining Dick at lunch I engaged a small boy who sold newspapers in the street to let us know when the other car started. This was to prevent our being given the slip by any chance; but it proved a needless precaution, as we scrambled through a Spanish menu, and still the grey car slept in its coat of greyer mud before its chosen hotel; therefore Dick and I bolted a hasty impression of Vitoria, as we had bolted our lunch.

He read aloud as we walked, bits out of a guide-book about Wellington, and King Joseph, and the battle of Vitoria that had decided the fate of the Peninsular War; but as it happened, I was more interested in a strange effect of light and darkness in the sky which for a moment made an unforgetable picture.

Another wild, April storm was boiling up, and where we [pg 61]stood in the square, below the long flight of stone steps, the high cathedral above seemed built against a cloud-wall of ebony. A long sabre of sunlight struck upon the tower and threw a ray of reflected gold on the white Virgin in her niche. Over all the town there was no other gleam of light, and so had the afternoon darkened that it was as if a mourning veil hung between our eyes and the solemn sky.

Suddenly the deep-toned bells of the cathedral boomed; and the doors opening, hundreds of women clad in black, with close-folded black mantillas poured out, down the double stairway to the square.

As they came nearer, and each figure took individual significance with the breaking of the cloud, the rich browns and blue-shadowed greys of the buildings—deep and soft as velvet—attained fine value as a background for lace-framed faces, and the vivid colours of little children's cloaks.

For a single instant I forgot even Monica, in the tingling sensation that the life of Spain was throbbing round me, but a touch on my arm brought me back to her with a bound.

“The grey car is getting ready to start, señor,” murmured a Spanish voice, as two Spanish eyes looked up—hopeful of pesetas—into mine.

[pg 62]

X

The Unexpectedness of Miss O'Donnel

I think that not once did Carmona or anyone else in the Lecomte spy the car which, with the unflagging obstinacy of a bloodhound, kept on the fresh trail of the pneus that began again outside Vitoria; for while we had the trail we were satisfied to hover always beyond eyeshot of those in front.

We had a crowd to see us leave the town, a laughing crowd who seemed to wonder why people in their senses should rush about the world when they could stop at home and take siestas. And the peasants by the roadside were amazingly good-natured too, though we disturbed their avocations and upset the calculations of their animals.

Stately Spanish señores, whose long brown or indigo capas trailed over their mules' backs, smiled thoughtfully and envied us not, rather pitied us, perhaps. Barefooted women in yellow shawls gave kind smiles, and flashed looks from eyes like stars, as often blue as black, but always singularly Celtic. Scarcely a face but was furnished with grave Celtic features; for Celts these people were long before they were Spaniards; and there is no type so persistent, except the Jewish.

One handsome old man on a donkey so lost control of his beast when we swept into view, that he was dislodged, and would have fallen on his face had he not enmeshed his knees in some intricate tracery of rope. Round and round spun the frightened animal in the midst of the road, like a cat chasing its own tail, [pg 63]the rider toppling over, his well-cut nose all but scraping the ground.

Our car was stopped and I was out in a moment, though it must have been a long and giddy moment to that human spinning-jenny. A few tangled seconds, and I had him unwound and reseated, expecting no gratitude. But to my surprise, when I got the old fellow right side up, I found him wreathed in smiles, pouring out thanks and wishes for my good speed. Remembering experiences in other lands which call themselves enlightened, I glowed with pride of my country folk, especially when the victim of progress politely refused five pesetas.

As we came nearer to Old Castile, the ancient land of many castles, I felt as a man must when at last he comes to a house which is his, though never until now has he held the key and been free to enter.

The northern provinces, peopled by mysterious Basques alien to us in blood and language, I could scarcely look upon as Spain. But in Castile I saw the heart and citadel of my native country. My father was Andaluz; my mother Castiliana, and she used to say that in my nature were united the qualities of the two provinces—Castilian pride and stubbornness; the gaiety and recklessness of the true Andaluz.

I hoped that some change of scenery, some sign given by Nature, might mark the passage into Castilla la Vieja; therefore I was grateful when the car ran upon a stately bridge, hung above a broad river that was a flood of tarnished gold. Thence we looked across to the old buttressed and balconied town of Miranda del Ebro, strange and even startling in its wild setting of white mountains; and as we slowed down in admiration, from a dark secretive tunnel which was the principal street of the place, there seemed to blow out, like wind-driven petals of flowers, a flock of girls in golden yellow, tulip red, and iris blue. Then, as we looked, followed a string of black mules with crimson harness, pressed forward by a dozen young men in short blue trousers, capped like Basques with the red birret.

[pg 064] It was like coming into a picture which our arrival had, in some magic way, endowed with life; and the effect did not wear off as we ran into the shadow-tunnel, where the brown dust lit up with flames of colour. Under the balconies bristling over narrow calles, little shops and booths blazed with red and green peppers, glowed with oranges and the paler gold of lemons, glimmered with giant pearls which were Spanish onions.

Miranda, I thought, was worthy of Old Castile; and when but a short distance further on, the way seemed blocked by a high ridge of mountains flung across our path, I began to hope that my mother's country—that home of highest Spanish pride and honour—had some real magnificence of scenery to give us. We wound into the splendid gloom of the gorge of Pancorbo, cut like a sword-cleft in the rock; and I said that this scene alone was worth a journey into Spain.

There was room only for the road, and the foaming Oroncillo tearing its way through the mountain. High over our heads, where fingers of sunlight groped, the railway from Paris to Madrid looped its spider's web along the precipice, winding through tunnel above tunnel in miniature rivalry with the sublimities of the St. Gothard. Below, deep in the shadow of the gorge, crouched the sad village of Pancorbo itself, stricken, desolate, articulate only in its two ruined castles on the height, Santa Engracia and Santa Marta, imploring Heaven with silent appeal. Still higher, towered a guardian mountain of astonishing majesty, seeming to bear aloft on a petrified cushion a royal crown of iron. It was a place to call up in memory with eyes shut. This was the majestic entrance into Castile; but it raised my hopes only to dash them down. Once past the serrated needles and fingers of Dolomite rock which made the grandeur of the gorge, we came again to monotony of outline, and began to realize Castile as it is; a vast and lonely steppe, wind swept, bounded by an infinite horizon.

Treeless, silent, unbroken by hedge or boundary, guarded by [pg 65]a ruined watch-tower on each swelling hill, the illimitable plain lay sombre and impressive.

No labourers were to be seen; no villages were in sight, whence men could come to till the land; nevertheless, everywhere were signs of cultivation by invisible hands, harvests to be reaped by men who would spring from one knew not where.

Yet the monotony of these tremendous spaces was redeemed by such changeful splendour of colour as I had never seen. Swelling undulations, worthy to be named mountains, were warm with the purple of heather, though no heather grew upon them. Sometimes you could have fancied, from a sudden outburst of radiance on a distant hilltop, that a rainbow had lain down to rest. And through all there was never absent that impression that this was painted-glass-window country with its rich tones of crimson and violet, its palely luminous skies, and the solemnity of its blended hues. Always there was a haunting effect of sadness, even in the spring purity of those white blossom-arches which decorated the brown monotony of our roads.

The sky still burned dusky red when in the midst of a wide plain, the soaring twin-spires of Burgos stood up for our eyes against a rose veil of sunset pinned with the diamond heads of stars. Away to our left, as we ran towards the town, was a dark building like Eton College chapel standing on a wind-swept hill; and this I knew to be the convent of Miraflores, where Isabel la Católica employed Gil de Siloe to make for her father and mother the “most beautiful tomb in the world.”

I felt a sense of possession in the grand old town, coming upon it thus at its best; and I was glad that fate had driven me into my own land en automobile. Even though, in following Carmona to watch over the girl we both loved, I might have to keep often to the beaten track made commonplace by tourists, the way would never be really commonplace, as to sightseers who take the ordinary round by train.

Each new hour of life on the road would build up knowledge for me of my people and my country. I should not be studying [pg 66]it in any obvious, guide-book way, and I should learn more of real Spain in a few weeks than in months of conscientious railway plodding from one point to another.

There was no question which hotel Carmona might choose. He would go to the best; consequently unobtrusive persons whose hopes lay in keeping to the background, must select one less good.

We halted outside the town, while I consulted a guide-book for the most Spanish fonda in Burgos. When, straining my eyes in the twilight, I read out a name, Dick exclaimed, “That's where Angèle's friends the O'Donnels are staying.”

“All the better,” said I. “You can carry out your commission without trouble. Perhaps you'll see them at dinner. They're sure to be the only foreigners there, so it will be easy to pick out their Irish faces in a dining-room full of Spaniards.”

There was little room in my mind for the O'Donnel family, however. We were near Monica now, and my one desire was to let her know that I had not failed.

We drove through a fine old gateway, up a broad street, and past big barracks, opposite to which was the hotel where Carmona would stop. But his Lecomte had already disappeared; and though Dick clamoured for dinner, I waited only long enough to secure rooms at our own fonda and put up the car, before going out in search of information.

By this time the Duke and his friends would be dining, and I could venture as far as the lower offices of their hotel without much fear of being seen by Carmona's sharp eyes. In any case, I decided to risk it, and on the way mapped out a plan of action.

A couple of porters were in the bare hall of the ground floor as I entered. Walking in with a businesslike air, I said in Spanish, “Have you some people here who came in a red automobile? They ought to have arrived this evening.”

“No, señor,” replied one of the men. “We have a party staying for the night who came in a grey automobile.”

Good fellow, how well he played into my hands! Hiding [pg 67]delight under a look of disappointment, I said that my friends were in a red automobile. “They may have been belated,” I went on. “They'll probably turn up before midnight. I hope you'll have good rooms to give them, at the front of the house. They're very particular.”

“I'm afraid all our best rooms are occupied,” said the man. “The señor who came in the grey automobile has taken five rooms along the front, on the first floor, with a private sitting-room. Unfortunately, your friends will have to put up with something at the back.”

I expressed regret, and went away joyful, having astonished the porter by pressing upon him two pesetas. I now knew all I wanted to learn, even—roughly speaking—the position of Monica's room; and I saw a way of sending her a message.

Dick was ready for dinner when I got back, but I did not try his patience long. He had inquired if the O'Donnels were still in the hotel, and had been told that they were, though they were leaving in a day or two. This was all we knew when we entered the dining-room, but, as a good many people were still seated at the long table and the numerous small ones, we glanced about in search of Mademoiselle de la Mole's friends.

There was not a face to be seen which you would not confidently have pronounced to be Spanish, if you had met it at the North Pole.

Dick and I sat down at a little table and began to talk in English, while round us on every side the Spanish language—pure Castilian, and slipshod, mellifluous Andaluz—gushed forth like a golden fountain.

Hunger, long unappeased, at first inclined Dick to a cynical view of life in general, and Spanish hotel life in particular, but his temper improved as the meal went on, and he even forgave me for deserting a starving man.

“No sign of the O'Donnels,” said he. “Perhaps they've a private dining-room.”

“I doubt there's one in the house,” said I.

[pg 068] “Well, I'll inquire later,” Dick went on. “I've looked at every face here, and—”

“At one in particular,” I cut in.

Dick reddened. “I hope I haven't been staring,” said he; “but she is the ideal Spanish girl, isn't she? If I were an artist, I'd want to paint her.” As he spoke, his eyes wandered towards the table next ours, which, since a dish of Spanish peppers, rice, and chicken made a man of him, had monopolized all the attention he could spare from dinner.

I had noticed this; hence my gibe. But Dick was not far wrong about the girl.

Her place at the table put her opposite him; and her companion was a rotund, brown man, with the beaming face of a middle-aged cherub, and the habit of murmuring his contributions to the conversation in an Andalucían voice, with an Andalucían accent mellifluous as Andalucían honey.

The girl herself was true Andaluza, too, though of a very different type from the cherubic person who (Dick hoped) was her father. No such brown stars of eyes ever opened to the world outside Andalucía; nor did any save an Andaluza know, without being taught, how to give such liquid, yet innocent, glances as those, which occasionally sparkled from under her long lashes for Dick, when the Cherub was not looking.

She was a slim young thing, with a heart-shaped face of an engaging olive pallour; a pretty, self-conscious mouth, which changed bewitchingly from moment to moment; and heavy masses of dark hair piled high after the Spanish fashion, as if to suit a mantilla—hair so smooth and glossy that, from a little distance, it had the effect of being carved from a block of ebony.

“She's perfect of her kind,” said I; “but I thought you preferred American types.”

“Rot!” said Dick. “Comparisons are odious. I say, thank Heaven for a pretty girl, whatever she may be. But there's something particularly fascinating about this one.”

“I see a serious objection to her from your point of view,” I [pg 69]went on. “She's too young. You draw the line at them under twenty-two. I'll bet you she won't see twenty-two for a couple of years yet.”

“She might be worth waiting for,” said Dick.

“No good. She'll be married long before twenty-two. All self-respecting Spanish girls are. You'd better not think of her any more. Forget her, and look up Miss O'Donnel.”

“Angèle de la Mole says Miss O'Donnel's pretty,” said Dick. As he spoke, he beckoned a waiter; and I noticed that the girl with the eyes no longer made any pretence of hiding her interest in Dick. She even whispered to her companion, who, after listening to what she had to say, turned to look at us with benign curiosity.

“Ask whether he knows Colonel O'Donnel and Miss O'Donnel by sight,” Dick commanded when the waiter appeared, to breathe benevolence and garlic upon us in equal quantities. He was shy of airing his own Spanish before a roomful of Spanish people.

I asked; the waiter looked surprised, and to Dick's confusion and my astonishment, indicated the occupants of the next table.

“The colonel and the señorita,” said he. It was so startlingly like an introduction that the cherubic brown man sprang up and bowed; and the girl, bending over the mazapan in her plate, let us see the very top coil on her crown of black hair.

Dick, overwhelmed, and recalling every word we had said, as a drowning man recalls each wicked deed of his life from childhood up, got to his feet, and began stammering explanations.

“Well, that shows what an idiot a man can make of himself,” said he. “Miss—Mademoiselle de la Mole gave me a letter of introduction, and a parcel with some little present, and I was looking around for you. My name's Richard Waring; I don't know whether mademoiselle's written about me. Anyhow—”

“Señor,” announced Colonel O'Donnel, grieved at Dick's distress; “no entiendo.”

“Habla usted español?” asked the girl. “No Inglees, we, [pg 70]much.” And she smiled a dimpled smile, straight at Dick, with one side glint for me.

Dick was, to use against him a favourite word of his own, flabbergasted. “Then you're not Colonel and Miss O'Donnel?” said he. “I though you couldn't be, but—”

“Si, si,” the Cherub reassured him, nodding. “O'Donnel. Aw—right.” He laughed so contagiously that we laughed too; and I found my heart warming to these unexpected, surprising friends of Angèle de la Mole's.

“Me María del Pilar Inés O'Donnel y Alvarez,” the girl introduced herself. “Angèle de la Mole, mi—mi fren.” Having wavered so far, between Spanish and English, she flung herself headlong into her native tongue. This was the signal for the Cherub also to begin fluent explanations, both fluting Andaluz together, and so fast, that Dick (painstakingly taught a little Castilian by me in leisure moments) found himself at sea, and drowning.

I had to translate for him such facts in the O'Donnel family history as I could unravel from the tangled web. The mystery of Angèle de la Mole's Spanish-speaking Irish friends (which she must have refrained from explaining in order to play a joke upon Dick) was solved in a sentence. An O'Donnel grandfather had fought in Spain under Wellington in the Peninsular War, and stayed in Spain because he loved a Spanish girl who had many acres. The Cherub's father was born in Spain, and spoke little English. The Cherub himself spoke none, or but a word or two. He was a colonel in the Spanish army, now retired. That was all; except that his son and daughter had once studied an English grammar, until they came to the verbs; then they had stopped, because life was short and full of other things. “But,” said Miss O'Donnel proudly, “me know, two, three, word. Lo-vely. Varry nice. Aw raight. Yes.”

When she thus displayed the store of her accomplishments, punctuated with dimples, any man not head over ears in love with another girl, would have given his eyes to kiss her. I was [pg 71]sorry for Dick. As for me—I found myself longing to tell Doña María del Pilar Inés O'Donnel y Alvarez all about Lady Monica Vale, with the conviction that her help would be of inestimable value.

Such is the power of a girl's eyes upon weak man, even when he adores a very different pair of eyes; and already it was strange to remember my stiff disclaimer of a wish to know the O'Donnels. I had called them “extraneous.” What a dull ass!

[pg 72]

XI

María del Pilar to the Rescue

At last, when the general confusion had subsided, I was able to impress upon the delightful pair that, if they would but speak very slowly, and kindly trouble themselves to give a word of three syllables, say, two of them (a punctilious habit disapproved in Andalucía) Señor Waring would be able to join the conversation. With true Spanish goodheartedness they did their best, though Heaven knows what it must have cost them. Dick also did his best, with a conscientious American pronunciation; but where tongues halted, eyes spoke a universal language, and we all got on so well that in ten minutes we might have known each other for ten years.

By the end of those minutes we were asked to the O'Donnel's sitting-room, which had been furbished up out of a bedroom; and there Dick brought the famous letter of introduction and the white paper parcel tied with pink ribbon.

My name had not been mentioned by Angèle. I was merely a “friend of Mr. Waring's”; and, it seemed, I had been designated vaguely thus in a previous letter in which our arrival had been prophesied. This had been Angèle's way of leaving it open for me to introduce myself as I pleased; but now there was no secret with which I would not have felt safe in trusting our old friends the O'Donnels, so I gave them my real name.

The Cherub's face lit up. “I knew your father well,” said he. “We learned soldiering together as boys, though he was four or five years my senior, and the hero of my youth. Our ideas”—--he [pg 73]coughed in an instant's embarrassment—“were different. This separated us. But I never forgot him. He was a great man; and it's an event to meet his son. When I saw you downstairs in the dining-room, it was like going back thirty years. Such a young man as you are now, was your father when I had my last sight of him. You are his living portrait.”

We shook hands; and I believe, with the slightest encouragement, the dear old fellow would have planted a kiss on each of my cheeks. That he did not, was a tribute to my English education.

The next thing was, that at Dick's request I was telling them everything; and as Pilar listened to the story which prefaced my errand in Spain, her eyes, which had been stars, became suns. When I spoke Carmona's name, she and her father uttered an exclamation.

“El Duque de Carmona!” echoed the Cherub.

“He!” cried Pilar. And they looked at each other.

For a single second, I asked myself if my frankness had been a mistake.

“You know the Duke?” I asked.

“Santa María, but do we know him!” breathed the girl. “I wish we could tell you no.”

“You don't like him?”

“Do we like the Duke, Papa?”

The good Cherub shook his head portentously. “The Duke of Carmona is a bad man,” he said. “He has not done us any harm—”.

“Oh—oh!” Pilar cut him short. “He has not driven into a convent one of my best-loved friends?”

“My daughter refers to a sad story,” explained her father. “In Madrid it made a stir at the time. He jilted a school friend of Pilarcita's. That is almost an unheard-of thing in Spain; but he did it. The young girl's family got into trouble at Court—an insignificant affair; but the Duke is ambitious of favour. He had something to retrieve, after the scandal during the Spanish-American [pg 74]War, when he was quite a young man—not more than twenty-four—and—”

“You mean, the story that he speculated in horses—bought wretched crocks cheap and sold them to the army for the cavalry, with the connivance of the vets he's supposed to have bribed?”

“Yes. He managed to clear himself; but the royalties looked at him coldly, and he is not a man to bear that. The father of the girl—Pilarcita's friend—was at one time much liked by the young King, and people thought it was Carmona's motive for engaging himself. With the first breath of the storm the Duke was off; and the discarded fiancée entered as a novice the convent where she and my daughter went to school. That is why Pilarcita so much dislikes him—”

“But it's not all!” cried the girl. “What about the grey bull, poor Corcito.”

Colonel O'Donnel laughed his gentle, chuckling laugh.

“Our home is close to a ganadería—a bull-farm of the Duke's near Seville,” he explained indulgently. “The places adjoin; and as I've allowed this Pilarcita to grow up a wild girl, very different from the young ladies of Seville she should emulate, she has made friends of the Duke's cattle. There were, some years ago, a grey bull that was as tame with her as a pet dog; but it took a dislike to the Duke, who came to have a look at his bulls once, and attacked him. The saying is that the Moorish blood in the Carmonas gives them a cruel temper. At all events, Carmona could not forgive the bull its disrespect, and promptly had it sent off to the slaughter-house, though it was a toro bravo.”

“That's like him,” said I.

“There's nothing he wouldn't do against an enemy, or to gain a thing he wanted,” said Pilar, turning to me. “Take care, now he wants something you want.”

“It's been so between our families for generations,” I said. “My grandfather ran away with the girl his grandfather wanted to marry, and my father and his in their youth had a furious lawsuit.”

[pg 075] “Which won?” asked the girl.

“My father.”

“Be sure he will remember,” said she. “Oh, how I wish we could help you! It would be such a revenge upon him for poor Eulalia and for Corcito. Papa, can't we do something?”

“If we could,” echoed the Cherub, “for his father's son!”

Suddenly the girl jumped up and clapped her hands. “Oh, I have thought of the thing!” she cried “It would be like a play.” But her face fell. “I don't know how to propose it,” said she. “Perhaps you and Mr. Waring would disapprove. And how could we invite ourselves—”

She stopped; but I made her go on. “Please tell us,” I said. “It's sure to be a splendid plan. And anything associated with you would bring luck.”

“This would be very much associated with us,” said she, laughing; “for the idea is that, instead of going home by rail as we meant to do, day after to-morrow, we go on in your car with you, pretending to be Mr. Waring's guests, and you supposed to be my brother Cristóbal.”

“Pilarcita, some wild bird has built its nest in your brain,” said the Cherub.

“Wait till I finish!” the girl commanded. And it was easy to see that, though her father shook his head, she was a spoilt darling who could do nothing wrong.

“I only wish Cristóbal were here,” she went on, breathlessly; “but there was a regimental dinner, and he had to leave us. He'll come in later, and you shall meet him, and hear what he says to the plan. Oh, there's not much fear that he'll object, when you are Angèle's friend, and she's doing all she can for you. He'd walk through fire to please Angèle. And this would be but to give up his leave—or at least the going home with us—and lending you his uniform, which I'm sure would fit you sweetly.”

I could not help laughing at the way she disposed of her brother and his plans, to say nothing of those she was making for me; but she rushed on, anxious to justify her counsel.

[pg 076] “You don't understand yet,” she insisted. “It's a wonderful idea. You see, papa and I have met the Duke in Madrid, at friends' houses. I've scarcely spoken to him, for Spanish girls don't have much chance to talk with men, but he'll remember me, and papa too. The lucky thing is, he's never seen my brother since Cristóbal was a little boy, and then no more than once or twice, when he came out to his ganadería. He must know, if he stops to think, that papa has a son; that's all. And you say the Duke only saw you at the fancy dress ball, in a Romeo costume, with a fair wig. When Lady Monica Vale gave that start forward, and looked at you in the automobile, although you'd made your car different he fancied you might be in it, and telegraphed to have the man he suspected kept back at Iran. Well, it was clever of you to change with your chauffeur; but all the same, if you go on, dressed as a chauffeur, you can never have a chance to get near Lady Monica. And if you appear as yourself, even though the Duke isn't sure it's you, he'll keep Lady Monica out of your way. And her mother will help him, as she wants them to marry. But think how different for my brother! We all happen to meet—suppose it's in the cathedral—and papa says: ‘How do you do? You don't remember Cristóbal?’ He'd simply have to accept you as Cristóbal, although he might find Cristóbal rather like that troublesome Marqués de Casa Triana.”

“Casa Triana is also Cristóbal,” I laughed. “Ramón Cristóbal.”

“All the better. We shouldn't any of us have to fib. I always said Cristóbal is the luckiest saint to have for a patron. See how he's offering his help to you. And oh, did you know he's the patron saint of automobilists? To-morrow I'll give you a Cristóbal medal to nail on your car. They're made on purpose; such ducks! But now do you begin to understand what I'm driving at, and that it wasn't just impudence to suggest our going in your automobile, papa and I? What with us, and San Cristóbal, you ought to get your foot on the Duke's head.”

“But what about your brother Cristóbal?”

[pg 077] “Oh, he! We must all thank San Cristóbal that he has this leave, otherwise the Duke could easily find out; but instead of going home he can go—why, he can go to Biarritz, where he will see Angèle, so it will be nice all round. And imagine yourself in his uniform, walking with us in the cathedral, where the Duke is sure to take Lady Monica and her mother,—otherwise, why stop at Burgos? One comes for that, and nothing else, unless one has a little brother in the garrison. Now what do you say, Don Ramón?”

“I say you're an angel,” I replied with promptness. “But I also say that Colonel O'Donnel won't allow such an arrangement.”

“Oh, won't he?” exclaimed Pilar. “Do you think I'm an ordinary girl of southern Spain, who says ‘yes, yes,’ and ‘no, no,’ as her parents wish, and looks down on the ground while life passes? Only to think of being like that is enough to make a woman grow a moustache and have an embonpoint out of sheer ennui. It's my Irish heart which keeps my father and brother alive; and when I want to do a thing they hurry to let me do it lest I have a fit—of which I would be capable.”

“As you are a Cristóbal,” said the Cherub mildly, “it might be managed, if you liked, without our having to go more than an extra time to confession. I could wear the sin upon my conscience, if you could; and if you could wear also the uniform of my son.”

“I'd like to see Carmona's face when you're introduced,” remarked Dick, in his slow Spanish.

“You will see it,” exclaimed Pilar; and with this, the door opened and the other Cristóbal came in.

[pg 78]

XII

Under a Balcony

I liked the brother because he had his sister's eyes, and—being the ordinary, selfish, human man—I liked him still better for his enthusiastic desire to help the last of the Casa Trianas. Whether his enthusiasm was for the sake of Casa Triana, or Angèle de la Mole, was a detail. It had the same effect upon my affairs; and having taken very little time for reflection. I let myself be hurried away on the tide.

Pilar—as unlike a Spanish girl in mind as she was like one in face—stage-managed us all. We merely accepted our parts in the play, I thankfully, the others calmly.

Brother Cristóbal was, perhaps, not sorry to make an unexpected flight to Biarritz, with news of Dick and me as an excuse, instead of spending his leave tamely at home. There was, at all events, a suspicious alacrity about the way in which he agreed to disappear as early as possible the following day. As he was wearing the uniform which was to be made over to me, it was decided that he should bring it to my room next morning before hearing mass at the cathedral. It was Pilar's idea that I should go there with him, getting off before the fonda was fully astir, and seek sanctuary in dusky corners of remote chapels until my friends arrived.

“We'll find out when the Duke and his mother take Lady Monica to look at the cathedral,” said the girl, delighting in her own ingenuity; “and then we'll start too. Though we can't bear the Duke, we've always been civil to him and his mother whenever we've met in Madrid, praise the saints, so they can't be rude [pg 79]to us now. If we go up and speak, they'll have to introduce us to Lady Vale-Avon and Lady Monica. I shall take a great fancy at first sight to Lady Monica, of course; and I shouldn't wonder if I can make her like me. The rest will be easy for the whole trip. Oh, we shall have fun!”

I began to think we should, and that, thanks to a girl's counter-plotting, I should have pretty plain sailing in spite of Carmona. But because I began to see land ahead, I was the more anxious to give Monica peace of mind; and when we said good-night to the O'Donnels about half-past ten, I set out to carry through the plan I had thought of before dinner.

On the wall of the landlord's office, off the main hall, I had seen a guitar hanging. It belonged to his son, a romantic-looking young fellow, whose sympathetic soul delighted in lending the national aid to courtship, without asking a single question.

I would be no true Spaniard if I could not play the guitar; and in fact my mother had given me some dexterity with the instrument, before I was ten years old. I had neglected it for years; nevertheless, my fingers had but to touch the strings to be on friendly terms with them.

Madrid and Seville would probably be waking up to fullest life at this hour; but in provincial towns one goes to bed early because there is nothing more amusing to do.

At eleven the windows of the principal hotel were dark; and without being stared at curiously by any passer-by, I stationed myself under the first floor balconies, with my guitar.

I did not know which room was Monica's, but I did know that it could not be far away; and I counted on the chance that anxious thoughts might keep her from sleeping soundly.

Softly, and then more boldly, I began to thrum the air of the Hungarian waltz which they had played that night at the Duchess of Carmona's, while I told Monica I loved her. Often its passionate refrain had echoed in my ears since, and brought the scene before me. I hoped that Monica also might remember.

Five minutes passed, and still I played on, yet nothing happened. [pg 80]Then, when I had begun to fear failure, I heard a faint sound overhead. A window was opening. There was no gleam of light, no whisper; but something soft and small fell close to my feet. I stooped and picked it up. It was a rose, weighted by a grey suède glove, tied round the stem; and the glove was scented with orris, the same delicate fragrance which had come to me when I kissed Monica's hand, and her letters.

She had had my message, and answered it.

[pg 81]

XIII

What Happened in the Cathedral

Before six next morning, Cristóbal O'Donnel was tapping at my door, with the promised uniform and accoutrements concealed under the military overcoat which was also to be put at my disposal.

Hearing our voices, Waring appeared, yawning, at the door of the adjoining room, and there was a good deal of stifled laughter among the three of us, as I got into my borrowed red and blue. The things fitted well enough, as I have only an inch or two the advantage of the other Cristóbal, and even the cap accommodated itself to my head almost as if it had been made for me. When I was ready for the part assigned by Pilar, Dick said that I had never looked so well before, and probably never would again.

My suit-cases were packed, and the programme which Dick had to carry out when O'Donnel and I had gone, was to settle our account at the hotel, get the luggage bestowed on the roof of the car, and finally to drive round to the cathedral door, in order to start from there in the end, without going back to the fonda or garage. We were grumbling at the absence of poor Ropes, when there was a discreet knock at the door, and Ropes himself appeared as we opened it, like a jack-in-the-box.

His happy smile was changed to a stare of surprise at sight of me in the uniform of a Spanish officer, but true to his training he ironed all expression out of his features in an instant, and allowed himself to look only decorously pleased when Dick and I welcomed him with enthusiasm.

“Well done!” said I. “Did you break out of gaol?” But to [pg 82]tell the truth I was faintly uneasy; because, if he had, it would mean trouble for us all presently, when we had been traced by the police. But I need not have doubted the faithful Ropes.

“No, sir, I didn't break out,” he replied. “I wouldn't have done that in any case, though I didn't like to think of my work on your hands. But I'll tell you how it was, if I won't be disturbing you.”

O'Donnel, who could not understand a word, thought that he must be off, as he wanted to hear mass and catch the train for Biarritz. I let him go without me, therefore; and after our good-byes, Dick and I clamoured for Ropes' story.

“It was a rum go altogether, sir,” said he. “They took me off to the head police office at Irun, and the chief asked me all manner of questions; but I kept on repeating ‘no comprendo,’ and showing the cards of Mr. George Smith. I couldn't understand all their jabber, but they mentioned your name, and from the way they looked when I put on my stupid airs, I thought they began to have their doubts. The chief policeman motioned me to stop where I was, and ordered two of the men to go somewhere. From my place, I could see the bridge, and the two policemen who seemed to be looking for something.

“By and by came the thrum of an automobile, and I could tell it was a Lecomte. A minute later the chaps outside were talking to the Duke of Carmona, who stopped his car where they were. They talked a bit; then he gave the wheel to his chauffeur and came into the police office. The chief treated him very deferential; they laid their heads together in a corner, but I could see them reading a telegram, and once and again they had a squint at me.

“I knew too much to let on I suspected the Duke of a hand in the business, but having heard him answer Mr. Waring about the tyre in English as good as my own, I jumped up and asked if he'd interpret for me with the police. I explained what had happened, showed my card, and said there'd been a silly mistake which was causing me no end of annoyance. Then I [pg 83]said I'd write to The Times, about the sort of thing that happened to Englishmen travelling in Spain, and talked of the Embassy at Madrid.

“All the time I was speaking the Duke pulled his moustache and stared so hard, if I'd had on a false moustache or wig, or any of that kind of business, he'd have been sure to find it out. He looked cross and puzzled too; but finally he said, as I was English, and he believed they were wanting a Spaniard, there must be a mistake, and he would do the best he could to help me. I suppose he must have told them they were on the wrong job after all, for after he'd gone, and they'd buzzed awhile and made out a lot of papers, they said that as a very important person certified to my being Mr. George Smith, I could go.

“By this time it was afternoon, and I wanted to get on as soon as possible, so I took the next train for San Sebastian, and hunted up a place to hire a motor bike. I didn't know where you'd have gone after that, so I couldn't book by train; but I counted on picking up your trail if I kept the road.”

“How could you expect to do that, since there must be a lot of automobiles going back and forth between Biarritz and San Sebastian, even at this time of year?” said I.

“Why, from the non-skids, sir. I'd know ours anywhere. There's three of the steel studs worn close down on the off driving wheel, which makes a queer little mark in dust or mud. I could even see, once I got on to the tracks, that you'd followed the Duke's car, for your tracks came sometimes on his, almost obliterating his trail for a bit. I can tell you, sir, it cheered me up to be coming on your tracks like that. Made me feel at home in a strange country. The bike took me along pretty well, too; but do the best I could, night came on without my overtaking you. For fear of losing the tracks, I put up at a posada, got under way the minute there was a streak of dawn, and found you here by inquiring.”

“You're a regular Sherlock Holmes as well as a thorough brick, Ropes,” said I. “Now, have something to eat; get the [pg 84]motor bicycle back to San Sebastian by rail, and be ready for another start.”

With this I was off, leaving him to Dick. I turned the collar of Cristóbal's big coat up to my eyes, pulled the cap down far enough almost to meet it, and went out, praying to meet none of Cristóbal's fellow-officers.

The wild wind for which Burgos is famed wailed through the long, arcaded streets with their tall yellow buildings, and tried to hurl me back from the great honey-coloured gateway with its towers and pinnacles, where I would have paused to pick out the statue of the Cid from other battered statues in weather-beaten niches.

The few men who passed, wrapped in black capas turned over with blue or crimson, had the fine-cut, melancholy features of those who live in northern cold, and their glances were as chill as the weather. But that was better than if they had taken too much interest in a strange face in a familiar uniform; and it would have needed more than a freezing stare to blight the spring in my heart, for I was going to Monica.

I was ready to love Burgos for the sake of my childhood's hero, the brave old Cid, with whom every stone seemed to be associated. This was the city of the Cid as well as the country of the Cid; and if I had come into my fatherland as a sightseer, and not as a lover, I should have gone on a pilgrimage to his tomb at the convent of San Pedro de Cárdeña, only a few kilometres out of Burgos—that City of Battles.

As it was, I should have to be content with reading about it in some book, for Carmona would not desert his car to go; and where Carmona went, there must I go also.

At least I had a cup of coffee at “The Café of the Cid” on my way to the cathedral; and the first landmark I sought in that triumph of Gothic grandeur was the coffer of the Cid. I might have hours to wait, I knew, before the others would come, though in order to reach Valladolid at a decent hour, they must not delay too long. But sooner or later they would certainly arrive, for [pg 85]Carmona could not, for shame's sake, rush Monica out of Burgos without showing her the glory of Burgos. And meanwhile, for none save a paltry soul could Time have halted, heavy-footed, as a companion in that realm of shadowed splendour.

It was the first of the famous cathedrals of Spain on which I, an outcast son, had set my eyes; and a glimpse of the twin-spires from afar had given me some inkling of its beauty. Wrapped in sunset flames, I had seen the towers as if cut in precious stones, chiselled, according to legend by angels, like a queen's bracelet, adorned like an old reliquary. I had said to myself that the vast building was a wild festival in a stone, a bravura song in architecture. And if I remembered, as I looked, other twin towers which are the glory of the Rhine, I tried to put the reminiscence away, because I wanted the cathedrals of Spain to be different from those of any other country. I wanted them to speak to me with their own national inspiration. And this morning, as I flitted with the other shadows into the solemn dusk of the great nave, I was satisfied. I found no German inspiration here. Each detail struck the same curiously national note, from the rare iron-work to the octagonal lantern, a miracle of Plateresque design, which lifted itself, clear and bright, above the centre of the great church. Perhaps the effect lay partly in the gorgeous colour, colour never tawdry, never vulgar, as I had seen it sometimes in Italy; or else in the wonderful reliefs; statues in niches of gold, flowering stones, arabesques, alabaster columns, richly-toned pictures; but no matter whence it came, it was there, and could have been nowhere except in Spain.

I wandered from chapel to chapel, saw the strange mummy-like figure of the Christ of Burgos, supposed to shed blood every Friday; admired the treasures of the sacristy; and, I am half-ashamed to say, had just dedicated a candle to propitiate San Cristóbal, when my heart gave a leap at sight of four persons who appeared from behind the grand coro which fills the nave.

The old Duchess of Carmona, brown, stout, yet somehow stately, and the tall figure of Lady Vale-Avon advanced towards [pg 86]me, side by side. Behind came Monica, fresh and sweet in her white-winged grey hat and travelling dress, and the Duke of Carmona, dark as a Moor in contrast with her young fairness.

I dared not break upon her unexpectedly, after my experience of yesterday, so I turned away, and entering a chapel interested myself in a tomb which is the cherished jewel of the cathedral.

How long I could have kept my patience under provocation I can't tell; but my strength of mind had not been tested for five minutes when I heard the voice of my adopted sister Pilarcita. She and the excellent Cherub were claiming acquaintance with the Duke.

They were close to the chapel in which I stood. Half turning I saw the group, which consisted of six persons. Dick was not among them, and I wondered whether he were absent by design or accident.

Now the Duchess and the Cherub were talking together. Now the O'Donnel's were being introduced to Lady Vale-Avon and Monica. The two girls began chatting together. Dear Pilar, what a jewel of a sister she was!

“Do you remember Cristóbal?” I heard her suddenly ask Carmona, in a voice raised to such clear distinctness that I guessed she had seen a uniform behind the iron-work of the half-open chapel door. “You saw my brother, I think, when he was a little boy. He's stationed here now; we've been visiting him.”

I took this as my cue, and turning from the sleeping figure of Bishop Alonso de Cartagena, I walked out of the chapel to join my adopted family.

“Why, here's Cristóbal now!” exclaimed Pilar.

Then, in a flash, she had me introduced to all, leaving Monica till the last, so that the girl might have time to get her breath after the first shock of surprise.

Whether it was that yesterday had given her a lesson in self-control, or whether Pilar had contrived to whisper some word concerning her brother, I could not tell; but if Monica changed [pg 87]colour I could not see it, perhaps because a darkening of the sky outside had begun to deepen the rich dusk of the cathedral.

For her own sake I scarcely dared look at her; and my silence must have passed with the others for the shyness of a young soldier among strangers. But I did look at Carmona, feeling his eyes upon me, and met a stare as searching as Röntgen rays.

His face is not one easy to read; but for once the windows of his mind were wide open. If he had recognized me, and guessed the trick which had been played on him he would have worn a very different expression; but he was bewildered, uneasy, as he had been yesterday when he saw Monica lean forward, blushing, to gaze at a masked man in a motor-car.

He realized the likeness between Cristóbal O'Donnel y Alvarez and his own dangerous, though ineligible rival, Casa Triana. I could see the thought dart into his mind and rankle; I could see him push it into a dark corner kept for the rubbish of imagination. I knew how he was telling himself that there could be no connection or collusion between the O'Donnel family and Casa Triana. I hoped he also soothed his anxiety by reminding himself that in all probability Casa Triana, in the blue Gloria car once seen by his chauffeur, was busily forgetting Monica Vale in some distant part of Europe. Carmona had admitted one mistake yesterday: he would not be ready to fall into another to-day.

Lady Vale-Avon was also gazing somewhat sharply at the young Spanish officer, a brother of those old acquaintances of the Duke's. But now she coaxed her eyesight by lifting a lorgnette which, as Mary Stuart, she had not been able to carry on the night of our former meeting; and when a questioning glance at Carmona met with no alarming answer, the suspicious frown faded from her forehead.

After a few words we all, as if with one accord, began to move on upon the tour of inspection; and still there was no sign of Dick.

I would defy anyone to hold out for more than five minutes against the charm of the Cherub. Without raising his voice above [pg 88]a honeyed murmur, and with nothing particular to say, by sheer force of cherubic, Andaluz charm of manner he fascinated the Duchess of Carmona, and even Lady Vale-Avon, to whom he was a new type. She had been studying Spanish with an eye to the future, for she understood and answered Colonel O'Donnel; but with apparent innocence and real subtlety he contrived to keep the Duke busy explaining him, and murmured so many funny things that even Carmona was obliged occasionally to burst out laughing.

Meanwhile, Monica, Pilar, and I were left to follow behind, greatly against the will of the Duke, as I guessed by the sulky set of his shoulders.

“Quick, quick, into this chapel,” whispered Pilar, “before they look round. Then they won't know where we've disappeared, and you'll have five minutes grace.” As she spoke, she caught Monica by the arm, and whisked her into the Capilla del Condestable. Once behind the iron lattice, she darted away as if moved by a sudden passion to gaze at the carved altar piece.

“How wonderful!” said Monica. I caught her hands, which she held out to me, and then we laughed into each other's eyes, in sheer happiness and triumph over fate. “To think that you're here, after all.”

“Wherever you are, I'm going to be, while you want me,” said I, “and until we know whether I shall have to take you away.”

“I might have known you wouldn't fail me,” she said. “But I was so unhappy yesterday. When I saw that handkerchief I knew at once who you were, though I should never have guessed, with those awful goggles, and I couldn't help giving a jump, and getting red. But I shall never be so stupid again. I'll be prepared for anything. Just a whisper from Señorita O'Donnel was enough this time. While we shook hands she said, ‘Something's going to happen.’ So I was ready. Only it does seem too good to be true.”

“Here's the glove and the rose you threw me,” I said, showing them inside my coat.

“Here's the music you played to me,” she answered, touching [pg 89]her heart; and I would have given a year of my life to kiss her. “Oh, tell me, is Miss O'Donnel any relation to you, really?”

“Only a very good and clever friend,” said I, for there was not much time to waste in explaining things more or less irrelevant. “All this was her idea, to give me a chance of getting near you. And, as Cristóbal's my name too, as well as her brother's, the thing has been managed without a fib. Brother Cristóbal has leave. Friend Cristóbal will spend it with the family; that is, they're all going in that red car you saw yesterday—wherever you go. It would save a lot of anxiety if you could tell where that will be.”

“I can't,” said Monica. “I fancy mother's afraid I might find some way of letting you know; anyway, the Duke is always talking about how pleasant it is not to make plans beforehand, but to let each day arrange itself. I don't know how or where we're to spend the time before we get to Seville; but for Holy Week we're to be at the Duke's house. I'm not afraid of anything, though, now you're near; and I think I shall let myself be happy, in spite of the Duke, for your Spain is glorious, and I love it. I wish it weren't the Duke's Spain too!”

“He thinks it's all his,” said I. “Is he bothering you much?”

“No. He's being nice to me. You know, I refused him in Biarritz; but mother came in while I was doing it, and told him that I was too young to know my own mind; that he must be patient, and she could almost promise I'd change it. I said I wouldn't, but that made no difference. And as mother wanted to come on this trip, I had to come too. I have an idea they've made up a plan between them that I shall be left in peace till Seville, if I behave myself. If they suspect who you really are, though, it will be dreadful. I don't know what will happen.”

“They can't make you marry Carmona,” I said.

“No. How could they? such things can't be done nowadays; at least, I suppose they can't; and yet, when people are strong and determined, and unscrupulous too, one never knows what they may be planning, what they may be capable of doing. Often, [pg 90]in the night, I try to think what they could do, and tell myself they could do nothing, unless I consented, which, of course, I never would. Oh, I shall be very happy and safe now. It will even be amusing, or it would be if I were sure the Duke couldn't harm you.”

“He tried yesterday and failed,” said I. “If he tries again, he'll fail again. But for the present, he thinks it was a false alarm, and perhaps believes I've stopped in Biarritz, sulking.”

“It was dangerous for you to come,” said Monica.

I laughed. “Don't I look like the sort of fellow who can take care of himself—and maybe the girl he loves, too?”

“Yes, yes,” she answered. “How I love you, and how proud I am of you. If you should stop caring—if you should find it wasn't worth while—”

“We've too few moments together to discuss impossibilities.”

“Ah, but you have known me such a short time. Suppose you should see someone else—” and she glanced at Pilar's pretty, heart-shaped face, and the velvet eyes raised in contemplation of a carved Madonna.

“There's nobody else but you in the world,” I had begun, when Pilar beckoned. “They're coming,” she said. “You must be looking at this sweet little panel, Lady Monica. Cristóbal, go instantly and stare as hard as you can at San Gerónimo on the other side. See, that pet who is twisting his dear feet.”

It was thus they found us; the two girls chatting over the perfection of the tombs of the constable and his wife; the soldier blind to the charms of his sister's companion, and wrapped in reverent contemplation of a wooden masterpiece.

“We were so stupid to lose you,” said Pilar. “But we thought you'd be sure to come back this way by and by.”

[pg 91]

XIV

Some Little Ideas of Dick's

We said good-bye presently, still in the cathedral, all very polite and conventionally interested in each other's affairs. Pilar ingenuously hoped that we might meet again in Madrid. The Duke said he hoped so too, but did not know, as they were motoring, and stopped each day where fancy prompted. Pilar thought this charming, and said that we were going to have a little trip with an automobile, too. An American friend had invited us.

At that very moment the American friend was visible in the dim distance, standing with his back to us, gazing at an alabaster tomb. One would have thought he had some reason for avoiding us, or else escaping an introduction to the others, for he let them leave the cathedral before he tore himself away from his study of the sleeping cardinal. When they had vanished, however, he came towards us with a briskness which showed that he had taken more interest in our movements than he appeared to do.

“It's gone off beautifully!” Pilar informed him. “And you did exactly right, Señor Waring. You see,” she said to me, “on second thoughts one saw he'd better keep out of the way, for fear the Duke might begin to put two and two together, just as he was noticing that Cristóbal looked rather like someone else. He caught a glimpse of Señor Waring's face yesterday, in the car, and it will be safer for him not to see us in that car until we have gone on a little further. Then, he will have had time to get used to my brother's face, as my brother's. Wasn't that a clever idea of mine?”

[pg 092] We all praised her; and praised her again when she explained her policy in having dropped a hint about our American motoring friend, so that she need not be suspected of having tried to conceal anything when the car appeared on the scene.

“The Duke's auto was at the door when I came in,” said Dick. “He must have seen ours.”

“Yes. But he saw you, too, prowling round the cathedral by yourself. I suppose you have as much right to be motoring in Spain as he has, seeing the sights?”

This was true. And as the grey car had now probably gone off, it was time that ours persued.

Ropes was in his seat, coated and legginged once more in leather, and so well goggled that there was no reason why he should be associated in any mind with that Mr. George Smith who had threatened to air his wrongs in The Times. He had seen the other car go, so we must follow. We crossed the Arlanzon and I looked back regretfully at the citadel of Burgos, rising in the middle of the town. We had had no time to visit that castle in which so much history has been made. There the Cid was married; there he held prisoner Alfonso of Leon; there was Edward the First of England married to Eleanor of Castile; and there Pedro the Cruel first saw the light. But if there was one regret more pressing than another, it was that I could not go to the Town Hall and pay my respects to those bones of the Cid, and Ximena his wife, so strangely restored to Burgos, after their extraordinary wanderings to far Sigmaringen.

“Who is this Thith you all keep talking about?” demanded Dick, as the car spun along the river bank.

“Heavens, don't tell me that you've been brought up in ignorance of our national hero!” I exclaimed. “If I'd dreamed of such a thing, I couldn't have made a friend of you. Why, this was his town. He was married in the citadel. He—”

“How do you spell him?” asked Dick, cautiously.

“C-i-d, of course.”

[pg 093] “Great Scott! you don't mean to say my old friend the Cid was the Thith all the time, and I never knew it? What a blow! I don't see why C-i-d shouldn't spell Cid, even in Spanish; as a Thith I can't respect him.”

“Then let him go to the grave with you as the Cid,” said I. “But you know, or ought to know, that ‘C,’ and ‘Z,’ and sometimes ‘D’ are ‘th’ with us.”

“I never bothered much with trying to pronounce foreign languages,” said Dick. “I just wrestle with the words the best I can in plain American. But now—I always thought it rude to mention it before—I understand why you Spaniards seem to lisp, and hiss out your last syllables like secrets. As for the place we're going to next—”

“Valladolid?” I pronounced it as a Spaniard does, “Valyadoleeth.”

“Yes. That beats the Thith. My tongue isn't built for it, and I shall call it simply Val.”

With murmured regrets from the Cherub that we strangers were turning our backs on Burgos without seeing all its treasures, and sighs from Pilar for the Cartuja de Miraflores, and the most beautiful carved tomb on earth, we turned our faces towards Valladolid.

Our road cut through the arid plain that had stretched before us yesterday. Few trees punctuated the sad song of its monotony; but always in the distance rose yellow hills like lions crouched asleep, lights and shadows sailing above their heads with the bold swoop of the Titanic birds. More than once we crossed the poor, single line of railway, the main thoroughfare between Paris and Madrid, and Dick said that Spain needed a few Americans to wake her up. Three trains a day indeed, and a speed of fifteen miles an hour! People shook their heads and told you that Spain was no country to motor in. Well, it was certainly no country to travel in by rail, unless you wanted to forget where you were going before you got there. He wished he were a managing director; or no, on second thoughts, the thing he'd prefer would be to [pg 94]improve the future of the motor industry. Why, there was a fortune to be picked up by some chap with a little go, and a little capital. Look at these roads, now; not so bad, any of them, as far as we had seen; some, as good as in France; others, only rough because science hadn't been employed in making them; after rain they got soft and muddy, and then hardened into ridges. But a few thousands of dollars, well laid out, would change that. Then, with a good service of automobiles, see what could be done in the way of conveying market produce and a hundred other things. What was the matter with Spaniards that they didn't fix up some scheme of this sort?

The Cherub, listening politely to Dick's remarkable Spanish, and understanding perhaps half, answered mildly that it would be a great deal of trouble, and Spaniards didn't like trouble.

“But I suppose Spaniards like getting rich, don't they?” said Dick, who was resting, and letting Ropes drive, while he made a fourth in the tonneau.

“They are not anxious. It is better to be comfortable,” murmured the Irish-Spaniard. “Besides, it is vulgar to be too rich, and makes one's neighbours unhappy. It is a thing I would not do myself.”

“That is true,” said Pilar. “It isn't what you call sour grapes. Papa could be rich if he liked. We have copper on our land, much copper. Men came and told papa that if he chose to work it he might have one of the best copper mines in Spain.”

“And he wouldn't?” asked Dick.

“Not for the world,” said Colonel O'Donnel, with a flash of pride in his mild, brown eyes. “I do not come of that sort of people. I am an officer. I am not a miner.”

“But,” pleaded Dick, bewildered by this new type of man, who refused to open his door and let money, tons of money, roll in, “but you could sell the land and make an enormous profit. You could keep shares, and—”

“I have no wish to sell,” replied the Cherub.

“Well, you might let others work the mine for you.”

[pg 095] “But I prefer living over it. It's beautiful land. I would not have it made ugly. My ancestors would rise from their graves and cry out against me.”

“Still, we are poor,” said Pilar. “New brother, pray be careful of Cristóbal's clothes,” and she laughed merrily. “It will be a long time before we can afford to buy others.”

“And all that copper eating its head off underground,” gasped Dick.

“We have cousins who are prouder than we about such things,” said Pilar. “Two girls and their mother, who live in Seville. They've a beautiful old house with lovely grounds, but nothing else. How they manage not to starve, the saints know. They've sold their china and jewels—everything but their mantillas—to keep their carriage; and they have to share that with two other families of cousins, each taking it in turn; but they have three doors to the carriage—a door with the family crest of one, a door with the crest of the second, and another with the third; so nobody outside knows. A Scotch company want to buy their house and land for an hotel, and have offered enough money to make them rich for life; but they'd rather die than give up the place. And although one of my cousins can paint beautifully, and could make a great deal by selling pretty sketches of Seville, her mother won't allow it. I do think it's carrying pride too far; but there are lots of people I know who are like that.”

“It makes me feel as if I'd came through a week's illness just to hear it all,” said Dick. “I can't get over that copper.”

Through village after village we sped smoothly, everyone delighted to see us except the dogs, who resented our coming, and made driving a difficulty, until Ropes picked up a trick which usually served to keep dogs and car out of danger from one another. He would throw up his arms suddenly and the dog, thinking of a whip or a stone, would mechanically spring out of harm's way. By that time we would have whizzed past.

After a short run we reached Torquemada, home of the Grand Inquisitor; crossed the Pisuerga by a long-legged bridge straddling [pg 96]across the river-bed; had a fleeting glimpse of Venta de Baños; came to a straight-cut canal of beryl-green water (which Dick gloomily pronounced a surprising evidence of energy in Spain), and slowed down to wonder at a village of cave dwellings, hollowed out in tiers in the hillside, above the road on our right.

It was such a place as Crockett describes excitingly in one of his books of adventure. All the long, yellow flank of the hill was honeycombed with little, dark doorways and leering windows, whence wild faces looked. From hummocky chimneys rose the smoke of hidden fires burning in the heart of the earth; while down in the road a donkey or two, with their heads in yellow bags and their forefeet tied together with rope, tried to hop away up the steep hill, as if they were gigantic rabbits.

By the waterside stood pollarded trees, scraggy and black, ranged along the shore like naked negro boys, big-headed, with shaggy lumps of wool, hesitating before a plunge. The sandy roads were welcome after stones, and suddenly the landscape began to copy Africa, with shifting yellow sand deserts, brushed by purple shadows of the Sahara. Far away, the mountains, rolling along the wide horizon, glimmered blue, rose, ochre, and white, like coloured marble or a Moorish mosaic. Again we flashed past a troglodyte village in a hillside; crossed a magnificent bridge, which even Dick approved; wound through a labyrinth of strange streets like the streets in a nightmare, and roads to match; smelt mingled perfumes of incense, burning braziers, cigarettes, and garlic (the true and intimate smell of country Spain); saw Dueñas, where fair Isabel la Católica met Ferdinand in the making of the most romantic of royal courtships; spun through Cabezon: and then, as we entered Valladolid, began bumping and buckjumping over such chasms and ruts as had not yet insulted our wheels in Spain.

“Heavens! What can the City Fathers be thinking about?” gasped Dick, between the jolts which even the best springs could not disguise. On we went, through that famous old town which Philip the Second chose for the capital of Spain; and each street [pg 97]was a more awful revelation than the last. The car pitched and rolled like a vessel in a choppy sea, shuddering to right herself between breakers, though Ropes drove at walking pace. “Who ever heard of roads being all right outside a town, and going to bits in it?” Dick went on. “Why, in America—”

“But this is Spain,” the Cherub reminded him.

We had left Burgos at half-past ten, and it was two when we plunged into the town which Dick shortened to “Val.” There I took advantage of the part I played, and sought the hotel at which Carmona must lunch or perhaps put up for the night; but to my astonishment he was not to be found at either of the two possible fondas. I was hungry, for I had had no breakfast except a cup of coffee at the Sign of the Cid; but I would not eat until the mystery was solved.

The grey car had been seen coming into town, and none had seen it go out; nevertheless it, with all its passengers, had vanished. While the others went through a high-sounding French menu at the hotel first on the guide-book list, Ropes and I did detective work. It was he, really, who picked up the trail of the Lecomte, when we had walked back to the street it must have entered first; and even for Ropes this would have proved an impossible feat if our automobiles had not been the only two which had passed since the heavy rains. “I've got the pattern of those non-skids printed on my brain, sir, since yesterday,” said he. “What I don't know about 'em, isn't worth knowing.”

So he pounced upon the thick, straight, dotted line in the mud, and, losing it often, but always picking it out again, we turned and wound till the trail stopped in front of a private house. Later, it went on; but it was evident that the car had paused. The mud was much trampled, and probably luggage had been taken down.

We presumed, therefore, that those we sought were within; but the next thing was to find the resting-place of the Lecomte, lest it should disappear and leave us in the lurch, ignorant of its destination. Luckily for us, the worst was over. The trail led to a stable not far away, and as the doors stood wide open we had the [pg 98]joyous relief of seeing the car being cleansed of its rich coat of mud. The chauffeur was superintending, his back turned to the doors, and we walked quickly on lest he should spy a leather coat and guess that his own game was being played upon him.

“Now you can rest easy, sir,” said Ropes. “That car won't leave this town without my knowing; and it'll go hard if I aren't able to tell you in the course of the next hour whether it's due to start to-day or to-morrow.”

I laughed gratefully. “Thank you, Ropes,” said I. “I shan't ask how you mean to get your information. When you say you can do a thing, I know it's as good as done.”

“It's for me to thank you, sir—for everything,” he replied, flushing with pleasure.

Then we went back to the hotel. And whether Ropes lunched or not I cannot say; but I did, with a good appetite, Dick and my adopted family lingering at the table to hear my news.

In three-quarters of an hour Sherlock Holmes kept his word by sending in a short note, addressed (as I had suggested) to Waring. “Honoured Sir,” it ran, “Lecomte remains night. Master and friends stopping with his relatives. Will let you know time of start in morning, and have our car ready—Respectfully, P. Ropes.”

Some servant of the house or stable-boy had doubtless earned a few pesetas. Just how the trick had been done, was of little importance, for it was done. With a light heart in my breast, and Cristóbal O'Donnel y Alvarez' uniform still unsuitably adorning my back, I went with the others to do some sightseeing, and look for Monica.

We wandered rather aimlessly through the streets, stopping before any building which caught our interest; staring up at the windows behind which Cervantes wrote part of “Don Quixote” when he had come back from slavery; admiring the graceful mirador of that corner house where Philip the Second was born; [pg 99](“Much too good for him, since the world would have been better if he hadn't been born at all,” said Dick, who has Dutch ancestors and a long memory;) trying to identify the place where Gil Blas studied medicine with Doctor Sangrado; wandering into two or three churches, but wasting no time on the cathedral spoilt by Churriguera.

“As a Spaniard, what's your opinion of the Inquisition?” Dick suddenly asked the Cherub, as if he were inquiring the time of day. We had stopped for a moment in the Plaza Mayor where Philip had watched the heretics burning in their yellow, flame-painted shirts, in the first great auto-da-fé which he organized.

As another Spaniard, I know that this is the one question of all others, perhaps, which it is not wise to put to a Spaniard, even in this comfortable twentieth century. But Dick either did not know, or wished it to appear that he did not know; and I watched the effect of the words. But the Cherub was equal to the occasion—and his cherubicness.

He glanced round instinctively, as a man might a few centuries ago, to make sure that nobody overheard; then smiling slowly, he replied, “I am no judge, señor; I am half-Irishman.”

Pilar had looked disturbed, but she gave a little sigh at this, saying, “Come on, and see the museum.”

Nowhere in Spain can there be a more beautiful thing than that façade, well named Plateresque because of its resemblance to the workmanship of silversmiths; and inside the museum we found a collection of carved wooden figures marvellous enough, as Dick said, to “beat the world.” There were crucifixions, painted saints, and weeping virgins by Hernandez and Berruguete, faultlessly modelled, so vivid and beautiful as to be well-nigh startling; and I hoped that Monica might come while we lingered. But she did not, nor did we see her in the Colegio de San Gregorio. There, in the lovely inner court, however, I found a little grey glove on the marble pavement, and so like a certain other glove did it look that I annexed it, to compare [pg 100]with that other which lived in my breast-pocket with its friend the rose.

The pair matched in size, colour, and dainty shape. Even the fragrance of orris hung about it, and I knew this second glove had not been dropped by accident. Monica had been here, and she had left a message for me to read if I followed.

[pg 101]

XV

How the Duke Changed

“Lecomte getting ready, sir,” were Ropes' first words to me next morning; “and I've brought our car to the door.”

He had other news, too. An automobile had come in last night from Madrid, a sixty horse-power Merlin, and the chauffeur had reported snow half a metre deep on the mountains. The Merlin had stuck, he said, and had to be pulled out with oxen. Supposing the Duke intended going to Madrid instead of turning off by way of Salamanca, he—and incidentally we—seemed likely to come in for an adventure.

We had all taken coffee and rolls in our rooms, as nobody dreams of going downstairs for breakfast in a Spanish hotel; and soon after eight we were jolting out of “Val” through streets as execrably paved as those by which we entered. We had kept Ropes waiting after his announcement only long enough to strap our luggage on the roof; and as the other car had luggage and passengers also to pick up, we were just in time to see it leaving the house of the Duke's relations with everyone on board.

As the Lecomte took the road to the south on leaving town, it gave us an assurance that it would not make for Salamanca; but there was still doubt as to its movements. It could go to Madrid direct over the snow heights of the Sierra Guadarrama, or it could pay a visit to the Escurial. It might even halt there for the night; and as there were so many alternatives, we were anxious to keep our leader continually in view.

The wind was bitter cold, and Pilar shivered in her cloak, [pg 102]which was not made for motoring. When Dick saw this, before I could speak he had his own fur-lined coat off, insisting that she should put it on. “I can take Casa Triana's,” said he, “since he's still posing as a soldier of Spain.” And a glance warned me not to blunder by asking why, in the name of common sense, she shouldn't have mine which I wasn't using, instead of his, which was on his back. He wanted her to wear his coat, and hang common sense!

After an instant's stupid bewilderment I saw this, and could hardly help chuckling. How many days had he known her? Two and a bit. At Biarritz he had given me sound advice on my affairs; couldn't understand this fall-in-love-at-sight business; thought a girl wasn't worth a red cent till she was twenty-two couldn't see himself being sentimental in any circumstances; was going to wait to make his choice till he went back to America; believed a man owed it to his own country to put his country-women first; and anyhow couldn't stand a girl who wasn't able to converse rationally. Yet Pilar, if she were to talk with him in his own tongue, must perforce limit her scintillations to “Varry nice, lo-vely, all raight”; while, if he wrestled with hers, he could scarcely go beyond phrase-book limits.

The language of the eyes remained; but that has no place in the realm of common sense. My overcoat was singularly unbecoming to Dick; but he beamed with happiness in it, as he regarded Pilar cosily folded in his; and looking on the picture, certain things occurred to me which I might say to Dick when I got him alone. But after all, I thought I would keep them to laugh over myself.

On this morning of biting wind and brilliant sun, there was still more dazzle of snow to illumine the mountain tops; and though the road was dull, the beauty of the atmospheric effects was worth coming to Spain to see. The road we travelled and the near meadows seemed, as we went speeding on, the only solid ground in sight; as if we had landed on an island floating at the rate of thirty miles an hour, through a vast [pg 103]sea of translucent tints that changed with the light, as an opal changes.

Forests of strangely bunchy “umbrella” pines were blots of dark green ink splashed against the sky; and scarcely five minutes passed but we saw the finger of an old watch-tower pointing cloudward from a hill. Sometimes our road, dividing endless cornfields, stretched before us long and straight for miles ahead, over switchback after switchback, as if the hills chased each other but never succeeded in catching up. Then, when we had grown used to such an outlook, the road would twist so suddenly that it seemed to spring up in our faces. It would turn upon itself and writhe like a wounded cobra, before it was able to crawl on again.

Ours was a silent, uninhabited world, without a house visible anywhere, save here and there some stony ruin—a landmark of the Peninsular War. One could but think that gnomes stole out at night from holes under the hills, to till the land for absentee owners; for the illimitable fields were cultivated down to the last inch. We shared a queer impression that we had strayed into a country which no human eye had seen for centuries; but when we crossed the broad Douro running to the Bay of Biscay and Oporto, and steered the car jerkily through the ragged village of Mojales, at an abrupt turn of the road we were in a different world—a desert of stones.

Prehistoric giants had played with dolmens and cyclopean boulders, and left their toys scattered in confusion. Stonehenge might have been copied from one of their strange structures; and they had given later races a rough idea of forts and cities. Giant children had fashioned stone elephants, heads of warriors, dogs sitting on their haunches, granite drinking cups, and misshapen baskets, all of astonishing size. Or was it water, slow as the mills of the gods, and as sure, which had wrought all these fantastic designs, and piled these tremendous blocks one upon another?

A high stone bridge spanned a rocky ravine carved by that slow power in a few leisure millions of years; and there, sheltered [pg 104]from the wind, would have been an ideal place for motorists to picnic. But the Duke did not picnic, therefore we must not. Following hard upon his heels we went on, up and up into the mountain world, still in the playground of vanished giants, winding along a road as wild as the way to Montenegro. Rising at regular intervals before us, on either side stood tall stone columns, sentinel-like, placed in pairs to guide wayfarers through white drifts in time of winter storms. The country was wooded, and began to have the air of a private park, though the heights were close above us now, and our road ascended steadily. From the scenery of Montenegro we came plump into the Black Forest; and Baden-Baden might have lain in the valley below these pointed mountains clothed in mourning pines.

Squish! The brown slush of melted snow gushed out in fountains as our fat tyres ploughed through, and on either hand it lay unbroken in virgin purity beneath the pines. Half a mile higher, and even the traffic of heavy ox-carts and the sun's fierce fire had had no power to break the marble pavement. It was shattered and chipped, and carved into deep ruts by wooden wheels; but there were no muddy veins of brown. Ten minutes more, and our engine began to labour. Then, before there was time to count the moments, we were in snow to our axles.

The motor's heart beat hard, but with a sturdy, dependable noise which comforted Pilar, who was half laughing, half frightened, at this her first adventure. At any instant now we might come upon the Lecomte held in the snow-trap which threatened to catch us.

Ropes kept the car in the wide ruts made by ox-carts, but even with his good driving we swayed to right and left, leaving the rough track and ploughing into drifts dangerously near the precipice edge, or skidding as if we skated on polished ice, failing to grip the frozen surface.

Now was the time to relieve the willing engine. Dick and I sprang out, and Colonel O'Donnel followed, though we would have persuaded him to keep his place. Only Pilar was left in the [pg 105]car, with Ropes driving, while we three men, knee deep in snow, set our shoulders to help the Gloria as she made the supreme effort. Pushing, and slipping at every step, our blood (which had run sluggishly with cold) racing through our veins, we were putting on a great spurt of united force, when gallantly rounding a bend we all but rammed the back of Carmona's car.

There it was, stuck in a drift like a frozen wave; and there was Carmona himself up to his knees in diamond dust, gloomily superintending his chauffeur who packed snow into the radiator to cool the overheated motor.

All the extra power of the Lecomte gave no advantage over the Gloria here. Fate had set the stage for us, and we must obey the cue. No ingenuity of Pilar's could hide us in the wings any longer, and we must play our parts as Destiny prompted.

Only one thing was clear. Carmona could have had no idea until now that the O'Donnels (with that young soldier so like the Forbidden Man) were travelling in the red car whence he had already plucked a suspected passenger. The coincidence would seem strange to him; and if he were sure enough of his ground to risk another error, he would probably denounce me to the police in the next big town. Disguising my outcast self as an officer in a Spanish regiment would not be a point in my favour; but—he could do nothing now. Monica was here, and the moment was mine.

There was a savage joy in the situation, born of exaltation, of the high altitude, and of uncertainty as to what might come next.

“Shall you keep out of the way?” asked Dick; for we were still screened from Carmona's sight by our own car, which Ropes had stopped with a grinding of the brake; and Pilar's face was veiled.

“Not I. I'm going to have some fun,” I answered. “It must come sooner or later, better sooner, or what's the good of playing Cristobal O'Donnel?”

With that, I appeared from behind the car, and the others were following, while Pilar leaned out in anxious expectancy.

[pg 106] “How do you do?” said I, in Andaluz as lazy as the other Cristóbal could have used. I took off my cap to the ladies, and so did Dick and the Cherub, exposing heated foreheads, damp from honest toil. “Sorry to find you in such a difficulty. But we'll soon get you out of that, won't we, Señor Waring? Here are three of us with stout shoulders and willing hearts.”

“Four, counting my chauffeur,” said Dick in English, playing up to my lead, since there was no stopping me now. “We're delighted to do anything we can.”

Carmona glared as an animal glares when it is at bay; only, an animal can attack his enemies, and he could not attack us; for he was not sure whether we were enemies or no, and whether he would not be making a fool of himself if he let us know what passed in his brain.

It was evident that he thought very hard for a moment, and was of two minds as to what he had better do. But suddenly the baited look vanished from his face, as a shadow is chased away by the sun, and I guessed that a course of action had occurred to him with which he was well satisfied. This seemed ominous for me, and I would have given something to read his thoughts.

He answered our “How do you do?” with great cordiality—for him; said that he had been taken by surprise, at first, as he had no idea the motoring tour of which Señorita Pilar spoke would begin so soon, or bring us upon his track. It was a good thing for him, however, that we were here, and not only was he pleased to see us for our own sakes, but would be glad to accept our kind offer.

Meanwhile Pilar had pushed up her veil, and she and Monica were exchanging greetings. As for Lady Vale-Avon, her veil was up, too, and her lorgnettes at her eyes. I did not doubt that she and the Duke had compared impressions concerning our family party, after the episode at Burgos, impressions startlingly confirmed now, and Carmona's cordiality in such circumstances must have puzzled her. As to the Duchess, her large face was [pg 107]hidden behind a thick screen of lead-coloured tissue, and I could judge nothing of her feelings.

When Monica heard the proposal for propelling the grey car through the drifts, she had the door open in an instant, and would have been out in the deep snow, if we had not stopped her.

“You must all stay where you are,” said Carmona hurriedly, fearing, perhaps, that some opportunity for a word would be snatched in spite of him, if I were really Casa Triana. “The weight of three women makes no difference whatever; isn't that true, señor?” and he turned to Dick, who, according to our story, was the owner of the red automobile as well as the host of the party.

Of course Dick agreed, and so did we all, that the ladies were not on any account to get out. The Duke's chauffeur jumped into his place again, and, with a twist of the starting handle, the tired motor quivered to its iron entrails. There was a sudden awaking of carburetor, pistons, sparking-plugs, valves, trembler, each part which had been resting after the long pull, striving to obey its master. With a sighing scream of the gearing, the car stumbled forward and up, our united force pressed into service. Staggering, plunging, pushing, we gave all the help we could, and for a few minutes it seemed that with our aid the motor would claw its way to the highest point.

Our hearts drummed in our breasts, and sent the hot blood jumping to our heads as if in sympathy with the mighty struggle of the engine. But the Lecomte's forty horses, and the strength and goodwill of five men—counting Carmona, who did as little work as he could—were not enough. The wheels sank to the axles, whizzing round in the snow without propelling the car; with the motor unable to do its part, we men alone could not do all. The automobile would not budge for all our pushing; and, seeing that labour was lost, we stopped to breathe and raise our eyebrows questioningly at one another. Carmona, alarmed at finding that his chestnuts could not be pulled out of the fire by [pg 108]any cat's-paws at his service, wondered audibly what he ought to do.

“Someone who came to Valladolid last night was hauled through the drifts by oxen,” said I. And even as I spoke, like a ram caught in the bushes ready for the sacrifice, I spied in the white distance the black silhouette of an enormous ox.

He was not alone, for a more penetrating glance showed that he had a yoke-fellow as big and black as himself; and guided by a red-sashed boy in scarf and shawl they advanced towards us slowly but so surely that I suspected something more than a coincidence. The great lumbering animals were like blobs of ink against the snow, and the lithe figure of the boy made a fine spot of colour as he walked before his beasts, his stick to their noses as if it were a magnet which they, anchored head to head with a beam of wood, were compelled to follow.

It flashed into my mind that this youth and his oxen were not wandering through mountain snow-drifts for nothing. The wolves which howl in these same wild fastnesses on a winter night scent prey; and so I thought did the boy, with the trifling substitute of petrol for blood. This youth had made a good haul (in every sense of the word) by accident yesterday; was out searching for other hauls to-day, and would be while the snow lasted.

We hailed him. He feigned surprise, and hesitated, as if to enhance his value. Then, casting down long lashes as he listened to our proposal, pretended to consider pros and cons. It would be a terrible strain for his animals to drag such a great weight, but—oh, certainly they would be able to do it. They were docile and strong. Every day nearly they drew heavy loads of cut logs over the mountains. For twenty pesetas he would risk injuring his oxen, but not a real less; and they would drag the grey car to the top of the pass, that he could promise.

“What extortion!” protested Carmona, who is not famed for generosity, except when something can be made out of it.

“Oh, he's too handsome to beat down!” pleaded Monica.

[pg 109] That settled it. To please her he would have given twice twenty pesetas for half the distance. The boy was engaged without further haggling; the animals were harnessed to the big Lecomte with rope which the youth “happened” to have; and with a thrilling cry of “A-r-r-r-i! O-lah!” he struck the two black backs with his goad.

“I can't bear to see it!” Monica cried, covering her eyes, as the great heads were lowered to adjust the strain, and every muscle in the powerful, docile bodies writhed and bunched with the tremendous effort. Big as they were, it seemed impossible that two oxen could do for the car, with passengers and luggage, what its own engine refused to do; nevertheless the huge thing moved, at first with a shuddering jerk, then with a steady, if lumbering crawl.

“O-lah!” shouted the boy; “thump” on the thick hide over the straining muscles fell the goad, and thus the car lurched through the deep snow, all of us following except Ropes, who having poured melted snow into the radiator, and let the cooling stream flow through the waterpipes, was bringing on the Gloria slowly, by her own power. She had now but two passengers, and not half as much luggage as the Lecomte, which perhaps explained her prowess; nevertheless I was proud. “Brava, Gloria!” I should have liked to shout.

I could now have pushed ahead, and keeping pace with Carmona's car, as the oxen struggled nobly up the pass, have tried for a word or two with Monica. But perhaps Lady Vale-Avon expected such a move on the part of the troublesome young officer; and by way of precaution she had crowded near to the girl in the tonneau. A conversation worth having would have been hopeless thus spied upon, and I disappointed the chaperon by making no such attempt.

To my surprise, Carmona walked with us, instead of forging on beside his own car. His friendliness puzzled me. Each look directed at my face was sharp as a gimlet, though his words were genial; but the final shock came when he announced that he was [pg 110]bound for the Escurial, and asked if we would like to join his party.

“I know the palace like a book—better than I know most books,” said he; “and if you've never been, I can get you into places not usually shown.”

The Cherub thanked Heaven that he had never been; and far would it be from him to go to-day or any other day. He had beheld the Escurial from outside, and had been depressed to the verge of tears. Often since he had consoled himself for various misfortunes by reflecting that, at worst, he was not enduring them at the Escurial. But he would sit in the automobile and compose himself to doze while his dear children and friends were martyred in the Monastery.

“You're very good to personally conduct us,” Dick answered the Duke, “but we've no time for the Escurial.”

“It will be worth while to make time,” I hurried to break in, though Dick glared a warning which said, “You silly ass, don't you see the man's laying a trap, and you're falling into it?”

I was ready to risk that trap, and realizing that I meant to see the thing through, Dick urged no further objections.

[pg 111]

XVI

A Secret of the King's

Pilar said that the oxen were idiotic dears to break their hearts for nothing, not even a percentage on the twenty pesetas. But four-footed beasts are tragically conscientious, and these farmyard martyrs accomplished their task without a groan, while the Gloria crept up close behind on her own power.

I thanked the patron saint of cow creation when the straining brutes got to the top. The summit of the pass was crowned by a lion on a granite pedestal; a lion with a cold air of pride in his mission of marking the limit between Old Castile and New. For me also he marked something for which I owed him gratitude; my deeper advance into the heart of my own land.

Close to our resting-place at the top of the pass there was a rude hut, and one or two wagons which had strained up from the other side were halting their smoking teams. Here, seated in the car again, as we waited to see the oxen unyoked and the boy paid, a girl came out from the little house with a large volume, in which she asked us to sign our names. The Cherub scrawled something; and as Dick was scribbling, Carmona strolled across, to see whether or no I entrusted my name to the book. I had meant not to do so, but now I would have changed my mind had not Colonel O'Donnel stopped me. “I wrote your name, Cristóbal,” said he, in his ambrosial voice; and the situation was saved. Carmona made some commonplace remark to account for his approach, and walked away with a self-conscious [pg 112]back, as Pilar's glance and Monica's crossed the distance between the two automobiles and met mischievously.

The grey car took the lead again, and at a turn of the road it seemed that the whole world lay at our feet; yet it was not even all of Old Castile, so vast a country is my Spain.

Far as the eye could travel spread the fair land, green with the tender green of spring, yellow with patches of golden sand, darkly tufted with woods; struck with flying shafts of light, ringed in with ethereal blue.

Nothing could steal from me this illuminated missal of memories, and were I to be banished to-morrow, I should have Spain to keep in my heart, I said, as we rushed down the steep, winding way that serpentined along the southern slope of the Guadarrama. A breakneck road it was, but nobly engineered, twisting back upon itself in many coils, letting us fly with the speed of a bird to lower levels; and it seemed that scarcely had we sunk over the brink of the mountain than we were at the turn on the right which would lead to the Escurial.

Straight before us, rising out of the bare mountain side and seeming a part of it, towered and stretched a building vaster than any I had seen even in the limitless spaces of dreamland. Were it not for its cold regularity, I should have thought myself approaching another desert of giants who made toys of monoliths and obelisks; but these appalling domes and towers could be the work of man alone. There was no toying here; all was forbidding and gloomy; for this was the Escurial—immense, sinister, as if fashioned from the grim product of those iron mines which gave its name.

I could imagine the fanatical satisfaction Philip's dry mind had found in planning this monument to represent the gridiron on which Saint Lawrence was martyred. He who was to stand in history as the great Inquisitor, must build his monastery and palace in honour of a martyr! But Philip was the last man to have a sense of humour; and it was like him to appease an injured saint by giving him a church a thousand times bigger [pg 113]than the one destroyed on Saint Lawrence's own day, in the battle of San Quentin.

“Wouldn't the Escurial be hideous if it were anywhere else but just here?” asked Pilar.

She was right; for on the Sierra it seemed an expression of the Sierra; and in spite of Philip rather than because of him, it was splendid in the melancholy strength which made it a brother of mountains.

We lunched on extremely Spanish food at a fonda opposite the Escurial; and when the time came for sightseeing—a time for us, but not for the public—the Duke began by marshalling us all, except the weary Duchess and the lazy Cherub, through the great door guarded by Saint Lawrence. Once within, we saw the treasures, as a bird in flight sees the beauties of a town over which he swoops; but we did see them, and once I had three words and one look from Monica, before it occurred to Lady Vale-Avon to link an arm in her daughter's, in a sudden overflow of maternal affection.

Carmona had made a point of the “influence” which could open for us doors that, for others, would remain shut; and he did smuggle us into the Library of Manuscripts, the Queen's Oratory, and the Capilla Mayor to see the royal tombs. But after we had stopped longer than he wished in the church, and the Choir, where Philip learned that Lepanto had saved Europe from the Turks, and listened to the sad music of Mary Stuart's requiem, the Duke promised something still better, in the palace. “What you shall see there,” he said, “is a secret. It was a secret of King Philip's—so great a secret that even the writers of guide-books know nothing of it; while, if a tourist should have heard a rumour and asked a question, the attendants would say, ‘There's no such thing in existence.’ Only the Royal Family know, a few privileged people about the Court, and the guardians of the Escurial. As for me, I was told by someone here—someone whom I myself placed in the palace.”

My curiosity was excited; and even Dick, who resented this [pg 114]expedition, looked interested as we arrived at the palace—the great gridiron's handle. At the entrance Carmona separated himself from the rest of the party, saying that he must have a few words in private with the attendant who would show the rooms of Philip the Second. He walked ahead, engaged the brown-liveried guide in low-voiced conversation, and seemed to ask a question with some eagerness.

Observing the pantomime from a distance, I fancied that, for some reason, Carmona was to be denied the privilege of which he had boasted; but, apparently, he did not intend to accept defeat without a struggle. He and the guide moved on, then stopped again to argue—this time with their backs to us; but, from the action of Carmona's elbows, I judged that he put his hand into his pocket. Five or six minutes later he returned, to announce that after some difficulty he had succeeded in getting his own way. We might go, unattended, into the private apartments of Philip the Second; and while we were there, other visitors would be kept out. “If there are any, they'll be taken another round,” said Carmona, “and won't be ready to come into the King's rooms until we're ready to come out.”

The guide led us down the narrow staircase to the outer door of Philip's suite, then slipped away, shutting the door behind him. Lady Vale-Avon and Monica (the mother still clasping her daughter's arm), Pilar, Dick, Carmona, and I were now alone between the gloomy walls behind which the bigot and despot had lived his miserable life and died his miserable death.

There was a chill in the sombre place which froze the spirit; yet I, for one, did not feel sad. I was conscious only of an excited expectancy, as if I were waiting for something to happen.

We let our imagination set the meagre form of Philip in his chair, or by the desk at which he used to write; examined the grim relics of his monk-like existence; and finally moved to the death-chamber, set like a stage-box at the theatre, beside the high altar of the chapel.

So small was the room that it was filled by our little party of six; [pg 115]yet I felt there another presence which none of us could see—a grey ghost agonising for his sins, through a bleak eternity.

Monica felt it too, for she shivered, and exclaimed, “Let us go. This room seems haunted with evil. I can't breathe in it.”

“But now for the secret,” said Carmona. “Would you guess at any hidden opening in these walls?”

We stared critically about, and I began to test the wainscot, but the Duke stopped me. “You'd never find the place,” he said; “and I promised the person who told me not to give away the secret; but that doesn't prevent me from showing you what's behind the door.”

He moved close to the wall, stood for an instant, then stepped back, as we heard a slight clicking sound, like the snap of a spring on an old box-lid. At the same time a part of the wainscoting rolled away, leaving a narrow aperture.

It was dark on the other side, but Carmona took a gold match-box from his pocket and struck a bunch of little wax fosforos.

“Philip had this cell made for a place of penance and self-torture,” he said, “and it's just as it used to be during his lifetime, before he was too ill to go in any more. His twisted wire scourge is there, with his blood on it, his horsehair shirt, and a girdle bristling with small, sharp spikes. Will you have a look, Lady Vale-Avon? I can't go with you, for the cell isn't big enough for two, but I'll hold the matches at the door.”

Lady Vale-Avon is of the type of woman who enjoys seeing such things as these; and though she would not have tortured herself had she lived in feudal days, I am sure she would have dined calmly over an underground dungeon where an enemy—an inconvenient wretch like me, for instance—suffered the pangs of starvation.

She squeezed into the cell, descending a couple of steps, remained for two or three minutes, and came out, pronouncing it extremely interesting.

“Now, Lady Monica, it's your turn,” said Carmona; but Monica drew back, “I hate seeing torture-things,” said she, [pg 116]“and blood, even wicked old blood like Philip's, which I used to think, when I read about him in history, I'd love to shed. No, I won't go in, thank you.”

Pilar also refused, for if she went she would certainly have a nightmare and dream she was walled up; thus there remained only the three men to inspect the hidden horrors.

Carmona held his match-box to me, saying that when we had seen the place he would look in to refresh his recollections. But Dick calmly helped himself to several fosforos and took first turn, probably suspecting something in the way of an oubliette, especially prepared for me.

He reappeared presently, however, his suspicions allayed. “Beastly hole,” he remarked; “almost bad enough for Philip, though he did grill some of my best ancestors.”

I took a couple of matches, lighting them on the Duke's box; then, bending my head low, and pushing in one shoulder at a time, I squirmed through the aperture. In so doing, however, I contrived to trip over Carmona's foot, which must have been thrust forward, staggered against the opposite wall of the narrow cell, and lost both my lighted vestas. Carmona exclaimed, I stumbled, and almost simultaneously the door slid into place with a sharp click.

There was not space to fall at length. I merely lost my balance, and saved my head from a bump by shielding it with a raised arm, I steadied myself in a second or two; but I was in black darkness. Outside I could hear a confused murmur of voices, and would have given something to know what Dick was saying at the moment.

I was thinking that I should not like to be a prisoner in this hole (only large enough for the swing of Philip's scourge) for many hours on end, when there came an imperative tapping. “Holloa!” I answered, expecting to hear Dick speak in return; but it was Carmona's voice which replied. Evidently he was speaking with his mouth close to the secret door.

“I'm very sorry for this accident,” said he distinctly. “When [pg 117]you stumbled, you knocked my arm, and made me touch the spring. Unfortunately the door closed with such a crash, that the spring seems out of order, and I can't move it. But if you'll be patient a few minutes, I'll look for an attendant who understands the thing, to bail you out of gaol.”

If I had been Lieutenant Cristóbal O'Donnel I would have heard no more in the rhyming junction of those words “gaol” and “bail” than met the ear, but being the man I was—the man he suspected me to be—I did hear more; and I believed that he wished me to catch a double meaning.

“Does he mean to hand me over to the police now, on suspicion?” I wondered in my black cell—“before Monica's eyes?” But aloud I said, “Thanks; don't be too long, or I shall be tempted to smash the door.”

“You'll find that impossible,” answered Carmona. “Don't worry if I seem to be gone an age. There's only one man on duty to-day who knows the secret of this room; I asked for him when we came, but his comrade said he was away on leave till four o'clock. It must be that now, and I'll have him here as soon as possible. He will be the more pleased to set you free, as he's an old friend of yours. You remember little Rafael Calmenare?”

I was silent, seeing, as if by the glare of lightning, the whole design of the trap, and seeming to see also the triumph which must be in Carmona's eyes. But the pause had not lengthened to a second, when I heard Pilar's voice, speaking also close to the door.

“Of course you remember, Cristóbal. Rafael Calmenare of the Duke's ganaderia. But it's a long time since he went away.”

“After he was gored by Nero and lost his health, through the influence of a friend at Court I got him a place here,” I heard Carmona say. Then raising his voice for my ears, he went on, “Poor Rafael will be pleased to see you again. You must have played with him when a boy. I'm off to find him now.”

Silence followed these last words. I could picture the consternation of Dick and Pilar. Neither could do anything to help [pg 118]me, nor could I help myself. I could but wait in this suffocating black hole for the moment when a stranger should give me light, and exclaim, “This is not Don Cristóbal!”

Almost I admired Carmona for his quick wit. After a few moments of rage, at sight of the suspected man of Burgos Cathedral on his track in the red motor-car, the thought of the Escurial and his old servant must have sprung into his mind.

Had Calmenare been available at first, Carmona would have been spared the trouble of shutting me up in Philip the Bigot's torture-chamber; but hard pressed for an excuse to keep us at the Escurial till his man came back, he had put me where I could be kept while needed. And now that he was gone in search of Rafael, we three loyal comrades could not discuss the situation, because of Lady Vale-Avon's presence.

A brilliant stroke of Carmona's to have me betrayed by another than himself, so that Monica might not bear him a grudge! Who was this person masquerading as an officer of the Spanish army? would be the first question of the police. And the answer need not be long in coming. The Duke had reason to congratulate himself; I had been a fool to drop like a fly into his net, and now that I was in, I saw no way out.

“Oh, how I wish we could open the secret door!” I heard Monica exclaim.

“I can't even see exactly where it is now,” Pilar said. “Cristóbal?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“Poor little Rafael; a good fellow, wasn't he?”

“Very good,” I replied. To what end was she working? I wondered. But I was not to be made wiser. Before she had time to finish the hint I heard Carmona speaking.

“I've sent for Calmenare, who has returned, and will be here in a few minutes,” he called to me. It was like him to hurry back, so that by no possible means could the three suspected ones reach any understanding.

The moments dragged on, and I could have lashed myself [pg 119]with Philip's scourge in fury at the rashness which might involve the whole O'Donnel family in my disaster. Never had I been able to think less clearly; but perhaps it was the stifling atmosphere of the cell which made me feel that fingers in a mailed glove were clenched round my temples.

Outside, voices buzzed; but those who spoke must have stood at a distance, for I could catch no words. Then, at last, there was a new voice in the room. Calmenare had come.

“How do you do, Don Rafael?” Pilar exclaimed, as politely as if she had addressed an equal. “I'm glad to see you again. I've been waiting for you impatiently. Only think, my dear brother Cristóbal, whom you know so well, is in that dreadful place and can't get out, because the Señor Duque shut him in—by mistake—and broke the spring.”

“I do not find that it is broken, señorita,” answered the new voice.

“I couldn't make it work,” Carmona said hastily.

Click! went the spring under skilled fingers. The door sliding back gave me a rush of light and air which set me blinking for a second or two; and there I stood at the stranger's mercy.

What I saw, when my suddenly contracted pupils expanded, was a little man in the palace livery; a pale little man with insignificant features, and large, steady eyes. There was absolutely no expression in his face as for one brief instant our glances met. Then—“God be with you, Don Cristóbal,” said he. “I am glad to have been even of this slight service. I hope, señorito, you have not suffered from lack of air?”

“Very little,” said I. I held out my hand. He took it respectfully.

“Is it long since you saw each other?” asked Carmona, sallow and red by turns.

“About two years only, Señor Duque,” replied his ex-servant, expressionless as before, and quietly respectful to all. “I could not forget the date, for the Señor Colonel and the señorita, as well as the señorito himself, were always very good to me.”

[pg 120] The Duke was silenced. The test invented by himself had failed. Calmenare accepted me as Cristóbal O'Donnel; he was obliged to accept me too—at least for the present.

“Shall we get out of this place?” he said to Lady Vale-Avon.

She swept her daughter with her; but Monica had a backward look for me, sparkling now with malice for Carmona, radiant with relief for Casa Triana.

We said good-bye to Calmenare in the Duke's presence; and I would have pressed a gold piece into his hand for “opening my prison door,” but he would not have it. Afterwards, while we followed the grey car on the downhill road to Madrid, Pilar told the whole story with dramatic effect to the Cherub.

“My one hope was in Rafael,” she said. “I was good to him, you remember, when he was ill. And he and I had a great sympathy over Corcito, the dear grey bull. I prayed he'd never forgiven the Duke for that crime, and that he'd still be grateful to me. Well, I looked Rafael straight in the eyes when I said, ‘My brother Cristóbal is in that place, shut up by the Duke, who has broken the spring.’ With all my soul I willed him to understand, and he did. ‘If the señorita chooses to have a strange gentleman for her brother, he is her brother for me,’ is what he said to himself; no more! But what if he hadn't?”

“That's where I should have come in,” remarked Dick.

“What would you have done?” asked Pilar, breathless.

“I don't know,” said Dick. “I only know I should have done it; and that if I had, maybe Carmona wouldn't have been feeling as well as he feels now.”

[pg 121]

XVII

Like a Thief in the Night

No longer did the Duke desire our company. He had played his little comedy of good-fellowship, and it was over, though it had not ended according to his hopes. The grey car did its forty-horse best to outdistance us on the way to Madrid, but the road—so good that perhaps we lost nothing in the detour to the Escurial—distributed its favours evenly. We kept close on the Lecomte's flying heels until one of our four cylinders went to sleep, and Ropes had to get down and wake it up by testing the ignition.

Some fellow-motorists would have turned to offer help, but the Lecomte was ever a Levite where we were concerned; and when we were ready to go on, the grey car was not even a speck in the distance. Luckily, however, there was little or no doubt where its occupants would put up.

Though the Madrid house of the Carmonas had been burned down ten years ago (since when the Duchess had made her home at the old palace in Seville), there was scarcely a Continental paper which had not described the splendours of the Duke's apartment in one of the finest modern flat-houses of Madrid. Naturally, he would entertain his mother and guests there, so that it would be difficult to slip away with them unknown to us.

The thing I did not know was, how long he meant to stay in the capital; but as he must show Seville in Holy Week, and later perhaps other places in the south of Spain, to Lady Vale-Avon and Monica before their return to Madrid for the Royal Wedding, it was almost certain that he would go on in a couple of days.

[pg 122] The O'Donnels recommended to us the Hotel Inglés, the best Spanish hotel in Madrid, as well as the most amusing, and it was with a heart comparatively light that I looked forward to a first sight of my country's capital. How would it compare with Paris, with Vienna, with London? What adventures awaited me there? What was to be the next pass in this queer duel with Carmona?

But I need not have searched for comparisons. As we rushed into Madrid without threading through any suburbs,—since suburbs the city has none,—I discovered that it bore no resemblance to any other place.

We flashed from open country to a shady park, set about with buvettes and beer gardens; ran through a massive gateway, and were in the heart of Madrid. Electric trams whizzed confusingly round us, and far above the hubbub of such traffic loomed proudly a hill crowned with an enormous palace. There was no need to ask if it were the royal palace, for it was essentially Royal, a house worthy of a king.

My father had fought to put Don Carlos there—Don Carlos, far away now in Venice; but with all my admiration for his brave son Don Jaime, my sympathies flowed loyally towards the young dweller on those heights.

We swept under and round the palace hill, as Colonel O'Donnel directed. In spite of his instructions, however, Dick lost the way twice, plunging into wrong turnings; but the second time he did this it seemed that San Cristóbal—whose medal now adorned our Gloria and shaped our destinies—must have twisted the steering-wheel. There, before the door of an official building guarded by sentries, panted the grey car of Carmona; and among its passengers Carmona alone was absent.

“That's the Ministry of War,” said the Cherub, and with a quick thought I asked Dick to slow down. Taking advantage of her son's late cordiality, I spoke to the Duchess.

“We thought we had lost you,” said I airily. “I hope nothing's wrong, that you stop here?”

“Not in the least, thank you,” coldly replied the Duchess.

[pg 123] But Monica spoke up bravely. “The Duke didn't tell us why he wanted to go in. He only said he wouldn't keep us many minutes. Señorita O'Donnel, shall you be in Madrid long?”

“Only a few days,” said Pilar. “And you?”

“We shall be here again at the time of the wedding,” Monica answered quickly; “so I believe the Duke and Duchess will—”

“It is undecided,” Lady Vale-Avon cut in before the girl could make us a present of Carmona's plans. “We may take some excursions. As there's a fine road to Barcelona, we may go there and to Montserrat; and the Duke has said something about Bilbao—”

“But, Mother, surely we're going to Seville for Holy Week!” cried Monica.

“There's no reason why we should arrive before Maundy Thursday,” replied Lady Vale-Avon, hiding annoyance. “But isn't that the Duke coming out? I hope he won't be long. It's windy here, and you have a cold coming on, my dear Duchess.”

We were dismissed; and raising our hats again we drove on, Pilar waving a small, encouraging hand to Monica. “They won't do any of those things,” said the Spanish girl. “Something tells me they mean to start for Seville as soon as they can.”

“Something tells me so too,” said I. “And something tells me that Carmona's errand at the Ministry of War is to find out whether Lieutenant Cristóbal O'Donnel y Alvarez is really away from Burgos on leave.”

“That's what I was thinking,” murmured the Cherub. “But the thought will not bring a grey hair. Cristóbal is on leave; and he told his brother officers that he expected to go with his family to Seville. It was at the last minute that his plans were changed. No one was taken into his confidence; and it will be very negligent of San Cristóbal to let him meet in Biarritz any common acquaintance of his and Carmona's.”

“I'm putting my faith in San Cristóbal,” said I. “But as he has a good deal to attend to, the less I show myself in Madrid, where my adopted brother must be known, the better.”

[pg 124] “He hasn't been as often here as Pilar and I,” said the Cherub, “so he knows few people. Still, Cristóbal's uniform should now be put away, and Cristóbal should wear civilian clothes.”

“He certainly will,” I answered, laughing. And Colonel O'Donnel gave himself up to directing Dick which way to go, as we were in the most crowded centre now, close to the Puerta del Sol.

This big, open space, shaped like a parallelogram, walled by hotels, Government buildings, and shops, struck me as a Spanish combination of Piccadilly Circus and the Mansion House, thrown into one. Ten busy streets poured their traffic into the place; intricate lines of tramways converged there. The pavements were crowded with loungers who had the air of never doing anything but lounge, and wait for excitements. There was much coming and going of leisurely pedestrians, talking and laughing, all classes mingling together; men in silk hats on the way to their clubs chatting with men in capas and grey sombreros, who belonged to very different clubs; smart officers in uniform shoulder to shoulder with bull-fighters whose little twisted pigtails of black hair appeared under their tilted hats; ragged but handsome beggars thinking themselves as good, if not as fortunate, as their brothers in broadcloth; merry boys shouting the evening papers, black-eyed women and men selling cheap but colourful jewelry, post-cards, toys, and marvellous sweets. It was as gay a scene as could be found in any capital, and it seemed to me that this absolute democracy was after all the true note of modern Spain. Whatever else we may be, we never have been, never will be a nation of snobs, we Spaniards whose favourite saint is the peasant Isidro.

Steering cautiously through the throng which scarcely troubled itself to move before us, we took one of the main arteries leading out from the Puerta del Sol (where no sign of a gate was to be seen), and turned into the deep blue shadows of the Calle Echegaray to our hotel.

Already I had discovered that it is not the habit of Spanish [pg 125]landlords to descend from the important first floor to the unimportant ground floor and welcome their guests. They are glad to have you come if you choose, but they do not care if you stop away, for there are plenty of others; and whether you are cousin to the King of England or an American millionaire, or a Spanish commercial traveller, very timid and just starting in business, you will be given the same reception, unless you put on “proud airs,” when you will be shown that you had better go elsewhere. But with an old friend, all is different; everyone welcomed the Cherub and the señorita; for their sakes everyone welcomed Dick and me. I was vaguely introduced as a relative—no name given; no name, in the flurry of greeting, asked; for Spain is not like France or Germany, where the first thing to do is to write down all particulars about yourself on a piece of paper.

Ropes drove the car off to a garage, and we were shown to rooms which made us realize that we had left the provinces behind and come into the capital.

“Thank goodness I shall have a pillow to sleep on to-night,” said Dick, “instead of doing the carved-knight-on-a-marble-tomb act. I looked particularly at the two neat, rounded blocks those chaps in Burgos Cathedral had to rest their heads on, and the alleged pillows on my bed were an exact copy, hardness and all.”

“I like them hard,” said I.

“That's right! Stand up for Spanish institutions.”

“There's one anyhow I don't think you'd run down,” I remarked.

“Which one?”

“Spanish girls.”

We dined in great spirits that evening, in the big scarlet and gold restaurant; and in rich, red Marqués de Riscal Dick drank confusion to the Duque de Carmona. The Cherub had told us where Carmona's flat was situated, saying that his car would perhaps be kept under the same roof with his carriage and the state coach.

[pg 126] The company was interesting to watch. Leoncavallo had as a guest the famous ex-bull-fighter Mazzantini; a Russian prince entertained several beauties of the Opera; and there were two or three politicians greatly in the public eye. We were hungry; the dinner was good; there was much to talk over; and all seemed to be going well.

But about half-past ten, when Pilar had gone, and the Cherub was having a “yarn” and a cigar in the sitting-room of our suite; Ropes appeared, looking serious.

“Something bad has happened, sir; and I blame myself,” said he.

“Something wrong with the car,” I asked quickly.

“Something out of the car, sir,” he amended. “The main shaft of the change-speed gear.”

“Impossible!” said I. “A car can't go along dropping her gearing, as a woman drops her purse!”

“No, sir. But she can, so to speak, have her pocket picked. After all that's come and gone, I ought to have kept my eyes open.”

“Out with it, my good chap,” said I; “don't try to break it to us.”

“It's the car that's broken into, sir. I found the garage all right, left her safe and sound, came back here, but after dinner thought I'd go round again to tinker a bit at the car in case of an early start to-morrow. When I got to the place there were three new fellows on duty, and they seemed astonished when they saw I intended to work on the Gloria. The chauffeur who looked after that car had been in, they said; and you can believe, sir, I pricked up my ears. He'd been working like a demon, said they, opening the gear-box and dismounting the main shaft. Then he went off with it over his shoulder, after telling the foreman his master wouldn't believe the pinions were so worn there ought to be a new set, and he was going to show it to him. They were surprised, I can tell you, sir, when I said we'd been robbed, and that the thief wasn't your chauffeur. But just then one of the old lot came [pg 127]in, and bore witness that I was the right man. It did seem like a bad dream, but a peep at the gear-box showed me it was real enough. I was a fool not to give somebody warning, or pay a man to stay by the car.”

“I can't see that you had reason to be suspicious,” said I, “although it's a rascally outrage, and makes me feel murderous. Did they describe the supposed chauffeur?”

“They did sir; and I expected to recognize the description. But I didn't; they're too smart for that.”

“You think we know him?”

“Sure of it, sir. Nothing easier than a bit of disguise.”

“It might be a common motor-car thief, who wanted a main shaft for a Gloria car.”

“And then again, sir, it mightn't.”

“Anyhow,” said I, “the thing to do would be to apply to the police, have the ruffian run to earth and arrested, no matter what his position. The worst of it is, though, I'm not anxious to have the eye of the Spanish police turned upon me, and there are those who count on that fact.”

“Wouldn't I like to smash their heads for this! Wouldn't I like to smash their car!” growled Dick.

“No. That would be playing it too low down,” said I.

Ropes coloured under his sunburnt skin, and began to search for non-existent dust on the leather cap in his hand.

“You're right, sir, no doubt,” he said, in a meek voice.

I was half sorry that he, or anyone, should agree with me. It seemed somehow as if my chauffeur were taking this monstrous thing too coolly. “Well, the fact remains that we're done,” I said, with suppressed fury. “If the Duke of Carmona has had a hand in this act, it's a sign that he means to get off while we're held up waiting for a new shaft and pinions to arrive—probably all the way from Paris. He can go to-morrow—”

“Beg pardon, sir; he can't, not in his own car,” said Ropes. “If we can't leave, no more can't he.”

“Why, what have you done?” I tried to speak sternly.

[pg 128] “Oh, next to nothing, sir. A bit of a touch on his magneto ignition, and a tickling of his coil, just enough to keep him in hospital till he's doctored up.”

Rope's expression was so childlike that Dick and I burst out laughing. “You demon!” I said. “How did you get at the car?”

“Much the same as they did at ours, though I don't pretend to be as clever as some. I said to myself, as this car of the Duke's is new, and he doesn't drive it himself, chances are he's never had a motor before, and wouldn't have a garage in Madrid, though he does live here part of the year and must have fine stables. I inquired what was the best garage besides ours, and strolled round, thinking the chauffeur would have gone straight to the Duke with his news. I found the place, and all the chaps were standing outside open doors, watching a couple of dogs having a fight. I walked in, without a word to anyone, though I'd have said I came from the Duke if I'd had to. There was the car; and before one of those blessed dogs had chewed the other's nose off, I'd polished up my little job. Then I came to you, feeling a bit better than a few minutes before.”

“You ought to be crushed with remorse,” said I; but I'm afraid I grinned; and Dick remarked that if he were King of England he'd give Ropes a knighthood.

“Heaven knows what the next move will be,” I commented, when the avenger had gone, not too stricken in spirit. “It begins to look as though the enemy would stick at little, and we can't go on giving tit for tat.”

“He won't take open action against you for the present,” said the Cherub, “as he isn't sure you aren't Cristóbal O'Donnel; and you're warned if he tries to strike in the dark. He's probably found out through the Ministry of War that Cristóbal's on leave, so to rid himself of your company he's resorted to the only means which occurred to him.”

“I have to thank you that he had no surer means,” I said.

“It's the fashion in Spain, if a friend wants a thing, to tell him it is his,” replied Colonel O'Donnel. “You wanted me for a [pg 129]father, Pilar for a sister. I said, ‘We are yours.’ There's not much to be thankful for. I would do ten times more for your father's son; and my confessor's a sympathetic man. Besides, to tell you a secret of mine which even Pilar doesn't know, though she has most others at her finger-end, your mother was my first love. I adored her! You have her eyes!”

Whereupon I shook hands with the Cherub.

[pg 130]

XVIII

The Man Who Loved Pilar

When Ropes had gone to send a telegram to Paris, Dick and I talked the matter over from so many points of view, that Colonel O'Donnel apparently went to sleep. It was only when I burst into vituperation against Carmona, that the excellent man suddenly showed signs of life.