The Car of Destiny 29 – Williamson · Verses Across
Literature · Romance
The Car of Destiny 29The Garden of Flaming Lilies
18
Literature · Romance
The Car of Destiny 29
The Garden of Flaming Lilies
WilliamsonEnglish
The voice of some maid servant singing a copla waked me early in the morning, after an hour or two of sleep.
El amor y la naranja se parecen infinito; Que por muy dulces que sean de agrio tienen su poquito.(1)
Yes, always a little bitter, I said to myself. But if for me there were after all to be some sweetness left?
Last night before parting, the Cherub, Dick and I had talked matters over from every point of view. I was only too thankful to take the advice of one girl on behalf of another, and give to Monica the benefit of that doubt which at first had not seemed admissible. But even Pilar confessed that Monica’s engagement to Carmona made our part a hundred times more difficult.
Whatever her motive had been—revenge upon me for supposed disloyalty, dread of her mother, or awakened ambition--she had in any case consented to marry him, and Pilar suggested that the dinner invitations had been sent out as an excuse for a public announcement, which would more firmly bind her to her promise. The news would have flown all over Seville in twenty-four hours; when the King arrived on Tuesday Carmona would certainly lose no time in telling him; Lady Vale-Avon would not wait for Monica to write to the Princess, but would probably wire; and no matter what my private anxieties might be, for Monica’s sake I must do nothing openly. As for defying Carmona to use his knowledge of my true name, and challenging him to fight, that must not be thought of. Monica’s fair fame would never survive such a scandal, especially in Spain, where a girl’s reputation is as easily damaged as the down on a butterfly’s wing.
But, as the Cherub said, there are many roads which lead to the centre of the world. He had learned at his club that the Duke had lent his box in the tribune to a friend, for such processions as he and his household did not care to see. That friend was a member of the club, and through him the Cherub had found out that the box in question was next to the royal box which would be occupied by the King, the Infanta Doña María Teresa, and her husband. Immediately upon making this discovery, the Cherub had begun to move heaven and earth to obtain a box for himself, either behind, in front of, or on one side of Carmona’s box. He did not know yet if he should succeed, for things were not done in a moment in Spain. Of course all the boxes were already subscribed for the whole week by members of the aristocracy and other persons of importance in Seville; but, then, the Cherub had friends and acquaintances in every class. If it were a question of money, money would not be spared; if it were a question of a favour for a favour in return, that favour would be given. There was hope that the thing might be arranged; and once Pilar came within speaking distance of Monica, nothing short of sudden death could prevent her from telling the girl the truth, vowing by all the saints that she had been deceived for the one purpose of separating her from me. If Monica could be made to believe that, she would have courage to be true in spite of all; and then it would be for me to save her from keeping the engagement into which she had been tricked.
As for my going to Carmona’s house and trying to see Monica, such a plan appeared useless, as I should certainly not be allowed to come near her. Therefore I must wait with such patience as I could, and let my friends help me in the subtle ways favoured in Spain.
Now, Palm Sunday had dawned crystal clear; but Pilar had explained that nobody occupied the boxes and chairs to see the procession of palms in the morning; that, though it was pretty to see, it was not one of the great sights; and, as one must be waiting early outside the cathedral, it was unlikely that anyone from Carmona’s house would be there. Still there was the chance, and I could not afford to miss it; so the O’Donnels offered to go with me into Seville, Dick, of course, being of the party.
Consequently, every one at the Cortijo was astir by six; and before seven Dick and I were in the patio, just in time to greet Pilar utterly fascinating in a mantilla.
She was dressed as a Spanish woman of the upper class should be dressed on Palm Sunday; and though the tight-fitting, rich black brocade silk which she wore would, in any other country, have seemed a costume not for young girlhood but for middle age, it suited her wonderfully. Her clear-skinned, heart-shaped face, with its great soft eyes and red lips, was beautiful in the cloudy frame of black lace; and her piled hair, of so dark a brown as to appear black, except when the sunlight burnished threads of gold in its masses, looked ruddy as the leaves of a copper-beech gleaming through the figured lace.
“By Jove!” exclaimed Dick, jumping to his feet when he saw her. No more than that; but Pilar was woman enough to understand the value of the compliment; and she smiled, patting the flounce of her mantilla into still more graceful folds on her breast.
“You think me nice like this?” she asked. “I’m proud of my mantilla, you know. It came to me from my great-grandmother, as all the best ones do come to Spanish girls; and I’ve two lovely white mantillas which I wear on great feast days when I want to be very beautiful.”
“At bull-fights?” asked Dick, his eyes adoring her in a way he would have laughed at in any other man only a few weeks ago.
“I don’t go to bull-fights,” said Pilar. “I love the poor bulls and horses so much, it would make me sad to see them die. Though, if I were a bull, I would myself choose a brave death in the arena, after a life of five glorious years, rather than the slaughter-house, or a weary existence of labour till old age or overstrain finished me. But I drive in the paseo on the bull-fight days, and for the feria. Ay de mi! A girl in Spain has few other chances to make herself pretty for the world to see, unless she lives in Madrid; and if it were not for the bull-fights, I suppose many girls would never get husbands. But, Our Lady be thanked, I do not have to look for one.”
Did she mean that there was any understanding with Don Cipriano?
I knew this was the thought which flashed through Dick’s mind. And if Pilar had been desirable in motoring days, she was irresistible at home.
Before eight o’clock the Gloria was at the gates, and twenty minutes later we were on foot in the street of the Gran Capitán, mingling with the crowd who waited for the first procession of Semana Santa to pour out from the cathedral doors. But the crowd was not a dense one, and the face I hoped to see was not there. “It will be a long time before anything happens,” said the Cherub. “Here, when a thing should be at eight, it is at nine, or maybe half-past. What does a little time matter? But mass is being said. Who knows that the old Duchess may not have had a religious fit, and come to hear it, bringing her friends?”
No more was needed to make me anxious to go in; and we entered the cathedral, which is, to my mind, the most beautiful, inspiring, and poetic in the world.
The two O’Donnels flitted away in the dusk, mysterious as the twilight of the gods, and we guessed that they were going to hear mass. Soon they found us again. They had not seen those for whom we searched; but the procession was starting.
We made haste out before it, and none too soon, for it billowed forth after us in a glitter of gold and purple vestments, and tall, bleached palm-branches like beams of moonlight streaming against the blue of the morning sky.
“They’re not here,” said Pilar, when the last gleaming crucifix and waving palm, blessed by the bishop, had disappeared. “I was sure they wouldn’t come. And—it does seem hard to disappoint you—but I’m afraid they won’t be in their box this afternoon. Oh, we shall go, of course! But that will be the time for the Duke to lend the Conde de Ambulato his box. Thursday will be the great day, when the King will be in the royal box, and will walk with his cofradia of the cigarette-makers before Our Lady of Victory. You know how anxious the Duke is to win back the favour of the royal family; and he’ll hardly think it worth while to sit through the hours of a procession unless he can be next door to the King, with a chance of an invitation to his box.”
This was discouraging; still, I determined to be in the crowd during the afternoon; and I knew well that, though the splendid show of Semana Santa was an old story to the O’Donnels, they would not fail me for a moment.
Dick shamefacedly bought from one of many vendors an armful of blessed palms for Pilar to tie under the house windows, as a protection against the rage of thunder-storms throughout the coming year; and we drove to the country with the great glistening fronds blowing behind the motor-car like giant plumes.
I spent hours writing, tearing up, and rewriting a letter to Monica which Pilar was to try and deliver if she could, and when she could. We lunched and did our best to make careless conversation, as if we were not anxious and excited—Dick and I for our own selfish reasons; the two others in sympathy. We talked of Seville, past and present—once “Sultana of the South,” still beautiful and gay, though her reign is over. “We are very happy even now, among ourselves, we Sevillanos,” said the Cherub. “You should see a tertulia, if you want to know how families can enjoy themselves together. But there’s another side of the picture, too. English and American people—there are a few—accuse us of being unsociable. They say we never give invitations to luncheons and dinners as people of other countries do; that a few calls are exchanged, and that is all, in an intercourse, it may be, of many years.”
“Oh, I know what they say!” laughed Pilar. “I heard an American girl give a friend of hers a description of families she knew in Seville. ‘You go to call,’ said she; ‘and if the ladies are at home (they won’t be if they can help it), you’re shown into a shut-up drawing-room smelling of mustiness. In front of the fireplace, if there is any, or else the brazier-table, a hard yellow or red satin sofa is drawn up, an armchair on each side. All the rest of the furniture’s ranged in a straight row round the wall. It’s in the afternoon, but you wait till the ladies dress, because if they’re in they’re sure to be in wrappers, unless it’s so late that their carriage is ready for the paseo. After you’re nearly gone to sleep, they come, and you talk of any uninteresting things they can think of; never interesting ones, because they’re kept for intimate friends’ gossip; and the girls simper and stare as if you were a curiosity, because you’re allowed to walk in the street without a maid.’ That’s being ‘sociable’ in Seville, according to the American girl; and I’m afraid that she’s right from a foreigner’s point of view.”
All this, to amuse us; but unfortunately it was far from amusing to Dick. He sat looking introspective, and wondering no doubt, if Pilar meant to hint that, so far as the door of her heart was concerned, foreigners might save themselves the trouble of knocking.
Seeing him taciturn, as hostess she felt it her duty to console him, so when luncheon was over an invitation to go and visit Vivillo, the beloved bull, was delivered to all, with an especially beguiling look at Dick. He accepted with suspicious alacrity, and to please her I said yes; while the Cherub, who was evidently longing for a siesta, shrugged his shoulders dutifully. It seemed that we could see the pasture which was Vivillo’s drawing-room without trespassing upon Carmona’s land, on which I should have been loth to set my foot, even for Pilar; but when, after twenty minutes’ walk across meadows, we arrived at the hedge which divided the Duke’s ganaderia from Colonel O’Donnel’s farm, Dick would not be satisfied with a distant inspection of the grazing bulls. Pilar (denuded of her mantilla, but still in the black brocade, ready for the afternoon in Seville) was going to pay a friendly call upon her darling, and Dick was resolved upon an introduction.
Pilar cried gaily to a herdsman visible in the distance, and joyously obedient to the girl’s evidently familiar voice, the young fellow came running towards us, garrocha in hand. Between him and the hedge which separated the two properties, was a deep ditch which no bull, save in a state of fury, would care to jump. But not far away a long plank lay half hidden in rich grass, and the ganadero dragged it nearer, without a question, as if he knew already what was expected of him. Having pushed it across the ditch, to form a bridge at the spot where the hedge was thinnest, he took off his hat, and welcomed the gracious señor and señorita home. Vivillo, said he, was well, but would be the better for a sight of the señorita, who was the one human being he had seemed to love since the day of the tienta which had proved him brave.
Yes, there he was—the “lively one,” well named indeed!—grazing for the moment off there to the south-east. Could not the señorita see his brown back among the grey and black ones, farthest away? But she had only to call. Vivillo knew her voice and would answer to it as to no other. It was really a marvel. And was it true that she had begun negotiating for his purchase? Ah, it was a pity that such a toro bravo would not have his chance to fight in some splendid corrida, where the noblest bulls of Spain must meet the most skilled of the espadas. He—Mateo—had often thought what a grand spectacle it would be to see Fuentes and Vivillo together. But—well, better waste the best bull that ever grazed on these pastures, and please the señorita. For her interests it was a good thing that the Señor Duque seldom or never troubled to come and see los toros, for if his eye once lit upon Vivillo he would never part with him for any money, except for the honour of the corrida.
“Then be sure you don’t let the Duke have a hint!” laughed Pilar, happy and fearless as a boy, as she squeezed through the hedge and tripped across the plank, followed by Dick.
“She is perfectly safe,” said the Cherub, in answer to an uneasy look from me. “She’s as well known over there almost as the herdsmen who tend the bulls from their birth; besides, she has some curious influence over animals. I have never seen anything like it in another human being, though I have read of such things. Since she was a child, I have no longer had any fear for her over there; and Señor Waring is safe also, while he keeps with her and Mateo, unless he were foolish enough to make some demonstration. But for me, I am no friend of los toros when they are at home.”
Dick and Pilar were in Carmona’s pasture now, moving towards a troop of grazing bulls, magnificent creatures whose terrible horns and silken hides (branded with double circles under a crown) glittered in the sun. Scarcely a head was tossed in honour of the new-comers; but as Pilar raised her girlish voice to give a peculiar call, I saw a dark form in the distance separate itself from a group. Then a brown, lean-flanked bull, nobly armed with horns grand as the antlers of a stag, bounded away from his companions, and rushed in so straight a line towards Pilar, that in spite of the Cherub’s words, my heart was wrenched.
But I need not have feared. While the young herdsman and Dick stood by passive and admiring, this toro bravo of famous fighting breed reduced his run to a canter, and trotted up to Pilar as tamely as if he had been a belled cabestro.
The girl, opening a large knotted handkerchief which she had brought filled with sweet biscuit, took a step or two forward to meet the bull. Nestling against his huge head, powerful enough to bear up a horse and rider impaled upon his horns, she calmly fed the great beast from her store. Never could there have been a more beautiful picture since the day when another bull submitted to the caresses of Europa.
Vivillo scarcely deigned to look at Dick, who made some bids for his favour. All his chivalrous soul of toro bravo was absorbed in pleasure at Pilar’s return, gratitude for her remembrance of him. I would scarcely have believed that it could be real, had I not seen it.
For ten minutes she stayed, Dick close at her side, always ignored by the bull; then she returned and walked towards us, slowly, the herdsman keeping near and Vivillo marching after in a resolute way which would have turned grey the hair of a nervous man or woman.
But if Dick were conscious of his nerves in such an unusual situation, he did not show it. His head was bent over Pilar’s, talking earnestly, and though she never looked up at him in answer, once she broke out laughing, so merrily, I wondered what he had said.
In our own meadow again, safely delivered from the bulls, Pilar slipped instantly to her father’s side and began chattering about Vivillo, who stood by the ditch looking wistfully after her as he chewed his last biscuit. Dick and I were thus thrown together; and though Dick’s face is no tell-tale, I guessed somehow that his mind was not as calm as his features.
“I should think that might have been a little upsetting to an amateur,” I said.
“Maybe,” answered Dick, absent-mindedly. “But it isn’t that, if I’m looking queer. Say Ramón, I’ve done it.”
“What?”
“Proposed to a girl for the first time in my life. What’s more, I grovelled. I called Vivillo a lamb, though at the moment he was looking more like several dozen lions. I told her if she’d marry me, she could have him and any other bulls sitting about on our hearthrug; that we’d have a nice big one on purpose.”
“That ought to be an inducement—even from a heretic.”
“Oh, confound you, don’t harp on that. I’m mad about the girl. I know all you’re suffering, and if I ever put on superior airs, I take them back and swallow them.”
Even a man heartbroken would have had to grin; and Pilar had persuaded me not to be heartbroken yet. If I laughed, I sympathized too, and liked Dick better than ever because we were eating the same bitter-sweet orange of which the voice had sung. It seemed that Pilar had neither accepted nor refused him, but had asked for time to think; and he would have been a little encouraged if she had not suddenly said, “Don Cipriano loves bulls.”
At five o’clock we spun into Seville, with the car, for nobody knew at what time the procession might begin; nobody ever did know, it appeared. And Pilar was no longer merrily boyish, but feminine and seductive again in her black mantilla.
The vast oblong of the Plaza de la Constitución was already humming with the excitement of a moving crowd. The lane between chairs and tribune was thronged with the poor of the town and peasants from the country, who would have no seats and must press for places to see the procession; but there was no ill-natured pushing, and gentlest care was taken not to crush the toddling, star-eyed children who tumbled under people’s feet. Soldiers laughed and edged their way past clinging groups of pretty girls. Civil guards, looking as if they had stepped out of old pictures, strove to keep order, their shouts lost among the cries which filled the air; cries of water-sellers bearing big earthen vessels; cries of those who wheeled cargoes of roasted peanuts in painted ships; cries of crab-sellers; cries of shabby old men, and neat, white-capped boys, hawking fresh-fried calientes, sugared cakes, and all kinds of dulces on napkin-covered trays.
English and American tourists in panamas wandered through the throng searching for their numbered chairs; vendors of seats shouted reduced prices; bareheaded women with brown babies in their arms offered programmes of the week’s processions; tattered boys shrieked the daily papers, and coloured post-cards; while from the balconies of private houses ladies in black mantillas, children in white, and foreigners in gay colours looked down upon the scene.
So passed an hour, while the boxes and best seats began to fill. Spanish families of the middle class, men and women in black, took front seats of the tribune, where the empty royal box made a brave splash of gold and crimson; but more slowly came members of the aristocracy and officers in blue and gold; and, jostled by the crowd, I waited in suspense.
Colonel O’Donnel had gone to his club for news of the box which, by strategic means, he had been trying to get. Pilar and Dick had gone with him, to remain in the car chaperoned by Ropes, until he should come out; so that I had no means of learning whether the Cherub had triumphed or failed. All I knew was, that a club acquaintance whose wife was ill, might be induced to offer his box, close to the royalties, to a second acquaintance in exchange for one directly behind that which the Duke of Carmona had taken. If this could be arranged, the O’Donnels would be given the latter, in exchange for—only the Cherub knew what. Borne back and forth with the moving throng, like a leaf in an eddy, my eyes seldom strayed for long from the tribune. Would the Carmona household come? Would the O’Donnels be their neighbours?
At last I saw Pilar and the two men entering the tribune. Yes, they had succeeded, I could tell from the Cherub’s description of the Duke’s box. But Carmona’s was still empty.
The procession had not yet appeared, though the first cofradia had been due in the Plaza an hour ago, and twilight was falling over the vast square, ethereally clear and pale. Only the figure of Faith on the soaring Giralda, turned as if to watch the scene, still glittered in the sun; and its dazzling brilliance had faded before a bugle note rang out, poignant as a cry of bitter sorrow from a breaking heart.
This was the herald of a brotherhood with its sacred images; and the police began to sweep the crowd before them out of the lane between the chairs and tribune. Slowly the flock was forced along by the shepherd dogs; and as the way cleared, forth from the dim tunnel of Las Sierpes marched, with arms reversed, a squad of civil guards; then a company of mounted soldiers, their bugles still wailing that sad warning of some piteous spectacle to come.
The cavalry passed; it was but a modern preface to a mediæval poem which, following closely, brought with it into the Plaza sad ghosts, grim ghosts, sainted ghosts of long past days.
Headed by one of their number bearing aloft an exquisite crucifix, walked a band of penitents carrying great lighted candles. Their white robes of linen swept in long pointed trains over the cobbles, the silver buckles on their black shoes glinting with each step; through the narrow slits in the blue capuchas, whose conical peaks tapered far above the wearers’ heads, their dark eyes burned with mysterious intensity. Two and two they moved, noiseless as bats save for the tap of silver batons, making an avenue of gliding stars, like will-o’-the-wisps, from the black mouth of Las Sierpes across the length of the Plaza.
Then suddenly, in that dark, distant tunnel flashed something luminous, something that moved, swung in air higher than the heads of men, something that was like a great blazing casket of jewels or a cloud of fireflies.
It came on, halting, starting again, reaching the open square, and revealing itself as an illuminated platform supporting a crucified Christ, life size, with no detail spared of tragedy and torture.
One of those fine sculptures of painted wood, such as I had seen at Valladolid, the sixteenth century artist had spent his soul in showing to believers what Christ had suffered that they might be saved; and so startling was the appeal of this terrible figure to the sympathies, that for an instant I found myself forgetting everything except a wild desire to rescue it.
As the paso, with its quivering silver lamps and strewn flowers, came near to where I stood, I could see, beneath the long velvet curtains which draped the platform, twenty pairs or more of slowly moving feet; and the frequent pauses were accounted for.
I watched the heart-rending figure pass round the corner of the Plaza, out of sight, swallows wheeling overhead as if once more to pluck the thorns from that bleeding brow; and as it vanished, far away in the dusk of Las Sierpes appeared another illumined mystery of clustering stars. Out from darkness into hyacinth twilight it floated, a canopied platform of purple velvet, crusted with silver and gold; under the glittering roof a virgin, who seemed to stand praying in a garden of tall lilies, lit by a sacred silver flame.
The crowding lilies, as the paso came nearer, were only white, waxen candles after all, but in their light the image of the Virgin gained a womanliness and beauty extraordinary. Her gorgeous trailing robe of gold-embroidered velvet, her under gown of satin scintillating with diamonds, her blazing crown of jewels, the sparkling rings on her delicate fingers, her necklaces, her bracelets, were such as the Mother of Christ never dreamed of in her simple life; and half the watchers knew grinding poverty, which a few of her gems might relieve.
That thought, I knew, would leap to many minds; but they would be the minds of foreigners; and I, being Spanish, understood. I saw what this procession of emblems meant to these people, rich and poor alike. They were being reminded, in the realistic and dramatic way which appealed best to their imaginations, of all Christ had suffered for them, of all the mother-woman had endured. The gems, which to alien minds were incongruous, crystallized their tears, their love, their gratitude; and Our Lady’s jewels were the jewels of the poor—rich possessions which could not be taken from them, joys for ever, objects of their highest pride.
Bending in gentle grief, the fair face bowed, the graceful figure passed in fragrance of lilies, perfumed wax, and incense sending blue clouds from silver censors swung by white-robed boys. With her, as she moved, went music—our Lady’s own music, sad and beautiful as moonlight on a lonely grave, cool as peace after hot pain.
Now the box in the tribune I had watched so long was filled with strangers. Pilar had been right. Carmona had given his place to friends. But with that soft, haunting music in my ears, sweet as remembered days of joy, I could not fear anything. Somehow I was at peace, with good thoughts in my mind and hope in my heart.
Brotherhoods in black, brotherhoods in purple, and paso after paso went by; Christus bending under the weight of the cross, Christus praying among sleeping disciples in Gethsemane, Our Lady of the Rosary, Our Lady of Tears, flaming rivers of light, suns rising out of purple clouds.
Night folded over the great square, with its crowd of people. No one had gone away. Electric lights burst out and made the scene like the auditorium of some vast theatre; but the stage and auditorium were one. Then the full moon, yellow as honey, looked over the thronged roof-gardens of tall houses opposite the tribune, and sailed high in heaven.
It was past nine o’clock when Colonel O’Donnel touched me on the shoulder.
“We saw you long ago,” he said. “You are so tall. Shall we go home to dinner? But on Thursday you will have another chance.”
Thursday! and there were three days in between. I wished that he could have left me in my dream of peace as long as it might last.
