The Car of Destiny 26 – Williamson · Verses Across
Literature · Romance
The Car of Destiny 26In the Palace of the Kings
18
Literature · Romance
The Car of Destiny 26
In the Palace of the Kings
WilliamsonEnglish
“Now I’ve something serious to say, Don Ramón,” began the Cherub, when we had passed the first pink-and-white house which marked the suburbs of Seville. “You mustn’t go to an hotel here. It would be dangerous. You must be our guest; and Señor Waring, too. I feel now as if our little play were true, and you were my son; while as for Señor Waring, we might have known him for years, might we not, Pilarcita?”
“Of course. For my part, I’m ready to adopt him for a brother, too,” replied Pilar.
I covered Dick’s recoil at this blow by thanking the Cherub. He was more than kind, I said, but we couldn’t think of—
“You will not think of disappointing us,” broke in the dear brown fellow. “Could you have imagined that our only reason is to keep you out of danger? No. We’re not so unselfish. We want you. Partings will come soon enough. We must have you with us, under our roof, at our table, as long as we can. Now you understand, you will say ‘yes.’ ”
“In my country,” said Dick, as a broad hint to me, “when we tell people we want them to visit us, we mean it; and I guess Colonel O’Donnel and Miss O’Donnel are the same sort.”
Of course I wanted to say yes; and, of course, after this, I did say yes without further parleying.
“Now begins the most critical time in this adventure of yours. Don Ramón,” the Cherub went on. “You see, as our place is only five miles outside Seville, we know many people; and though Carmona is seldom there with his mother, he certainly has acquaintances, and some of them may be ours too. You have travelled since Burgos as my son, though you wore his uniform only for two days; but you may be sure Carmona has been looking forward to shaking you off, once and for all, if you should venture to Seville to see the show of Semana Santa as other tourists see it.”
“He perhaps thinks that, because of our promise—which we’ve kept—he’s shaken Ramón off already,” said Dick.
“He knows better. The trick answered for a few hours; but his car broke down, and he had to accept our help. He said then that fate was against him; I heard it; and Carmona’s a man to be actually superstitious about you, now. So far, he’s kept the little señorita out of touch with you, but that’s nearly all he has accomplished.”
“Thanks to you both,” I cut in. “If it hadn’t been for your help, I should have been ‘pinched,’ and hustled over the border long ago. I see that now; and though I should have come back and begun the chase again somehow, it would have been a thousand times more difficult.”
“No use bothering about what might have happened,” laughed Pilar. “Let’s think of what did happen—and what will.”
“Nevertheless,” said I, “the thought’s often in my mind; what if we had missed Colonel and Miss O’Donnel at Burgos?”
Dick chuckled; and when Pilar wanted to know what amused him, asked my permission to tell. I gave him leave; and with a memory for detail which I could have spared, to say nothing of an attempt at mimicry, he repeated, word for word, my objections to meeting the Irish friends of Angèle de la Mole.
We were so intimate now that my point of view before knowing them did seem particularly comic, and Dick made the most of it.
“Well, think what we have to thank you for!” exclaimed Pilar; “this delightful trip. If it hadn’t been for you, Cristóbal would be here instead of with Angèle in Biarritz.”
“Come back to common sense,” implored the Cherub, “and help me plan for the Cristóbal who is here. If he sits in our box for the processions, Carmona will see him and say to some officious person, very different from Rafael Calmenare, ‘who is that young man with the O’Donnels?’ And the officious person will answer, ‘I never saw him in my life.’ ‘Ah,’ the Duke will exclaim, ‘isn’t he Cristóbal O’Donnel?’ ‘Not at all,’ will come the reply; and Carmona will proceed to make trouble.”
“For you as well as for me; that’s the worst of it,” said I.
“We care nothing for that. It’s of you we think,” said the Cherub. And because I knew it was true, more than ever it became my duty to think of him and his.
“Of course I don’t want to lose any chance of seeing Monica,” I said; “but on the days of the processions I shall walk about in the crowd and keep out of Carmona’s way.”
“As for us,” said Pilar, “we’ll try for a box near the Duke’s—though there may be nothing left, as the King’s to be here and there’s sure to be a crowd. I’ll do my best to whisper to Lady Monica, or send her a note, or speak with my eyes if no more.”
“You know how I depend on you,” I answered. “She may give you a letter, an answer to one which I hope she got at Manzanares.”
“I’ll be ready for the lightest hint,” said Pilar. “If she has a note for you, she’ll show it behind her fan. Then I’ll motion her to crumple it up and throw it on the floor as she goes out. If you don’t appear in our society, the Duke will think perhaps that after all he’s safe.”
“No. We mustn’t count on any such thing,” broke in her father. “If he can’t get rid of you in one way, he’ll try another; and there’s an old saying which is still true: anything can happen in Spain, especially in the south. Carmona will be watching for you. You must be prepared for that.”
“I shall be,” I said.
“We’ll all be,” Pilar finished. “Oh, there’s the old Roman aqueduct! Isn’t it splendid; and strong as if it had been built yesterday instead of in the days before the Goths. I love Seville—love every brick and stone of it, from the ruins of the Moorish wall and the Torre del Oro, and the glorious cathedral, to the old house in the Callo del Candilejo, where the witch-woman looked out and saw King Don Pedro fighting his duel. I don’t believe any other place could make up to me for Seville.”
By the side of the two-thousand-years-old-aqueduct ran a modern electric tramway; and one of the graceful arches made by Roman hands had been widened to let pass the railway line for Madrid. Farther on, Moorish houses with lofty miradors and beautiful capped windows were tucked between ugly new buildings, and across the shaded avenue of a green park was flung an extraordinary, four-winged spiral staircase of iron. I groaned at the monstrosity, saying that Pedro himself had never perpetrated an act more cruel; and the Cherub excused it sadly, by saying that it was convenient for the crowds to pass from one side of the street to the other, as I should see if I stayed beyond the Semana Santa for the feria.
“Look at the Giralda, and you’ll forget the iron bridge,” said Pilar. My eyes followed hers, and lit like winging birds upon a beautiful tower soaring delicately against the sky. So light, so fragile in effect was it, I felt that it might lean upon a cloud. In the golden light of afternoon the little pillars of old marble, the carved lozenges of stone, the arches of the horseshoe windows, the dainty carvings of the balconies, and all the marvellous ornamentation that broke the square surfaces of the tower, were rosy as if with reflections from a sunset sky. Its beauty was a Moorish poem in brick-work, such as no other hands save Moorish hands have ever made.
I looked back until I lost sight of the Giralda, except the glittering figure of Faith on the top (strange symbol for a weather-vane), while threading through tortuous streets, mere strips of pavement veiled with blue shadow, and walled with secretive, flat-fronted houses, old and new, pearly with fresh whitewash, or painted pale lemon, faded orange, or a green ethereal as the tints of seaweed. Even at first sight the quaint town was singularly lovable, in its mingling of simplicity and mystery, and as Spanish in this mixture as in all things else.
The tall, straight palms, with their tufted heads like falling fountains, clear against the sky, were Oriental, and seemed scarcely kin to the palms of Italy and Southern France. Nor were the narrow streets, through which we pounded over cobbles, like the narrow streets of Italian towns. They were Spanish; inexplicably but wholly Spanish, although Dick was not sure they did not recall bits of Venice, “just as you turn away from St. Mark’s.”
It was odd that shops so small could be so gay and attractive as these with their rows of painted fans, their draped mantillas, their bright sashes, foolish little tambourines, castanets tied with rosettes of ribbon in Spanish colours; their curious and vivid antique jewelry; their sombreros cordobeses displayed in the same windows with silk hats from Bond Street; their flaming flowers, Moorish pottery, old lace, and cabinets of inlaid ebony and silver. And I knew that I should learn to love the sounds of Seville better than the sounds of London or other cities I had seen.
Haunting sounds they were, these noises of a closely peopled old town, characteristic as those of Naples, not so strident as in Madrid; above all, the sound of bells, ringing, booming, chiming, so continuously that soon they would affect the senses like a heavy perfume always present. One would cease to hear them, and be startled only if their clamouring tongues were silenced.
In the streets, where the processions of Semana Santa would pass, already hundreds of rush-bottomed chairs were ranged in front of houses and shops, piled in confusion, which would be reduced to order for to-morrow, Palm Sunday. Beyond, in the Plaza de la Constitución—scene in old days of the bull-fight and auto-da-fé,—many men were busy putting the last touches on the crimson velvet and gold draperies of the royal box, pounding barriers into place in the tribune in front of the silver-like chasing of the Casa del Ayuntamiento’s Plateresque façade, or arranging row after row of chairs in the open space opposite, leaving an aisle for the procession to pass between.
“Now there is something to do before we drive home to the Cortijo de Santa Rufina,” said the Cherub. “I must see about getting a box in the tribune for the week; I must find out whether Carmona did come in by train last night. Don Ramón hasn’t suggested this plan, but I think he would not dislike it.”
“I meant to drop out of the car, to see what I could learn myself, and join you afterwards at home,” I said. “But you can get hold of things better than I, a stranger, can.”
“You must remain a stranger,” he supplemented my words. “If your chauffeur will stop at the top of this narrow street, I’ll walk down it a few doors to my club, and ask for the latest news. Carmona doesn’t honour his house in Seville too often with his presence, though his mother is here every season, and his arrival will be the talk of the club. I can take steps too, about a box for the show. I won’t keep you long; but you’d better wait at the Café Perla. Pilar can’t go there without me. Oh, you may smile; but remember we’re in Spain. She must wait at the house of a friend.”
The Cherub’s idea of a “little while” and a “long while” were always rather vague, and apt to dovetail confusingly one into another; but knowing what it was his aim to accomplish, I did not grudge the fifty minutes before his ample form and smiling face appeared in the doorway of the café.
“It’s all right,” were his first words. “I felt my luck wouldn’t desert me. Who do you suppose”—and he turned to Pilar, who had come on with him—“was the first man I ran across? No other than Don Esteban Villaroya.”
Pilar looked a little frightened. “But he’s a friend of the Duke’s. Won’t that make it awkward?”
“No; all the better. I told him Cristóbal and my daughter and I had motored from Burgos with an American friend, an important writer for the papers, who was going to pay us a visit. Not an untrue word to trouble my confessor with. Don Esteban may or may not mention our meeting to Carmona when he dines with him this evening.”
“Dines with him? Oh, I hope that won’t make mischief.”
“It won’t. Carmona arrived late last night, with his mother and guests. It seems preparations have been going on in the house for the past fortnight; and the first thing Carmona and his mother did was to send out half a dozen invitations for dinner this evening. Afterwards, he managed, probably through royal influence, to get permission from the Governor to take the party into the Alcázar by moonlight, and he’s going to have coloured illuminations, music, and Spanish dances given by professionals in the costumes of different provinces. A grand idea, Don Esteban thinks.”
“But why is he doing it?” asked Pilar, thoughtfully. “María purísima! It isn’t as if he were an impulsive or hospitable man, fond of getting up impromptu entertainments. This is done in a hurry. What can be his object? for he always has an object.”
“To amuse Lady Monica, who’s not pleased with him so far,” explained the Cherub. “And as he’s a good Catholic, at least in appearance, to-night or the night after will be his last chance to entertain till Semana Santa is over.”
“Somehow, I don’t feel that’s reason enough,” said Pilar, looking so troubled that I felt new stirrings of anxiety, and must have shown it; for Pilar exclaimed that she was a “little beast” to worry me.
“You haven’t worried me,” I protested. “Still, I think I’ll go to that entertainment at the Alcázar.”
Pilar and her father stared. “I see what you mean,” said the girl. “You hope to walk in and meet Lady Monica. But you can’t, because the Alcázar’s closed to the public after sunset. It will only be open for the Duke as a favour, because he’s rich and important, and care will be taken that no outsider slips in.”
“If there should be one more guitarist than he hired, do you think it would be noticed?” I asked, smiling.
Pilar clapped her hands. “You’re a true lover, Don Ramón,” she exclaimed. “Ay de mi! Nobody will ever love a little dark thing like myself, as Lady Monica is loved. I must be satisfied with the affections of my relations, and a few others, I suppose.” Great eyes lifted sadly ceiling-ward as she spoke, then cast down with distracting play of long curled lashes. Spanish after all to her finger-tips, this María del Pilar Inés, despite her Irish quickness. Poor Dick!
“You believe I could manage it, then?”
“I believe you will. Señor Waring has told me about the masked ball, and how you played Romeo to somebody’s Juliet.”
“The difficulty will be to get hold of the impresario.”
Pilar looked at her watch. “They’ll know at the Alcázar who’s been engaged. There’s an hour and a half yet before closing time.”
“What if you and I take a stroll through?” suggested Dick.
“We’ll all take a stroll through,” said Pilar, “and papa shall find out. You know, he can always make everybody tell him anything in five minutes. Even Cristóbal and I have never been able to keep a secret from him. If I’d planned to elope, he would only have to whisper and smile, for me to tell all, even if it meant my going into a convent directly after.”
“Yes, we must go to the Alcázar now, or it will be too late,” said the Cherub, with an indulgent twinkle at his spoiled daughter.
The car took us to the gate of the Alcázar, a gate of that unsuggestive Moorish simplicity which purposely hid all splendours of decoration from any save favoured eyes. The guardian knew and evidently respected Colonel O’Donnel; but with apologies which comprehended the whole party, he regretted that he could not let us in. The King was to arrive in a few days, returning from his yachting trip to the Canaries, and would live in the Alcázar which was being got ready for him. From now until the day after his departure, the Alcázar was to be closed to the public.
This was just, and as it should be, admitted the Cherub; but we were not the public. We were special ones, even as special as the Duke of Carmona who would entertain his friends there that evening. Surely the guardian must know that the O’Donnel family was on terms of friendship with the Governor of the Alcázar, who would suffer severe pains of the heart if he heard that such visitors had been turned away. Thus the good Cherub continued to whisper. And whether or no coin changed hands I cannot tell; but certain it is that in less than the five minutes allowed by Pilar for the working of her father’s fascinations, we were inside the forbidden precincts, accompanied by a lamb-like attendant.
It was from him that we must learn what we wished to know; but it would be unwise to betray a premature thirst for information on any subject save the history or beauties of the Alcázar. Asking a question now and then of our guide, we wandered from patio to patio, from room to room of that wonderful royal dwelling once called “the house of Cæsar.” Many a rude shock and vicissitude had it sustained when Goths fought for it with Romans, when Moors seized it from Christians, when Christians won it back, and conducted themselves within its jewelled walls in ways unworthy of their faith and boasted chivalry, yet the beauties which Pedro the Cruel restored in admiring imitation of the Alhambra, glowed still with undimmed splendour, in the sunshine of this twentieth century afternoon.
If I had not been preoccupied by my own private and extremely modern anxieties, I should have let imagination work the spell it longed to work, and make of me some humble character gliding shadow-like, but ever observant, through tale after tale of the “Arabian Nights.” In just such a palace as this had the Seven Calenders lost each an eye; behind any one of these fretted arches might one come upon a king, half man, half jet-black marble. The most captious of genies could have found no fault with the Hall of the Ambassadors save the absence of the roc’s egg; and despite my impatience the storied enchantment of the place soon had me in its grip.
Scheherezade, I said to myself, could have invented no tales to surpass in thrilling interest the scenes which had been enacted here. The drama of widowed Egilona and her handsome Moorish prince, ruined by her love; the tragedy of Abu Said, done to death by Pedro for the sake of his “fair ruby, great as a racket ball,” and the store of gems for which men still search secretly in hidden nooks of the Alcázar; the murder of the young Master of Santiago, who came to Pedro as an honoured guest; the love story of Maria de Padilla, whose spirit, the guardian whispered, could be seen to this day flitting in moonlight and shadow along her favourite garden walks, or trailing white robes through rooms which had been hers.
“Perhaps, as the moon is full, Maria will appear to-night in the garden to the Duke of Carmona and his guests,” said Pilar; and I knew from this preface that our probation was at an end.
The attendant laughed. “Perhaps,” he replied; “but I think there will be too much noise to please her. The Duke has engaged a troupe of dancers and guitarists to entertain his friends.”
“No doubt King Don Pedro used to amuse his in the same way,” remarked the Cherub, “employing the forerunners of Ramiro Olivero and his school maybe.”
“It is Ramiro Olivero who performs to-night,” said the attendant, playing into our hands.
“Of course! He is the favoured one in such affairs,” assented the Cherub. “It ought to be a pretty entertainment, and interesting to the Duke’s English guests. It will be somewhere in the gardens?”
“In the lower garden of the Moorish kiosk,” was the unsuspecting reply.
Pilar looked at me, and her eyes said, “The key you wanted is in your hand.”
