PR 5834 Wfc C3 1912 3 1822 01098 7444 LIBRARY s UNIV ,> 'V OP CAL.P-.> N,A SAN DIEGO PR 5834 W6 C3 1112 UNIVERSITY OF CAL FORNIA SAN DIEGO , I II I II HIM Illl I II ii i > "' '" 3 1822 01098 7444 C3 THE CAR OF DESTINY BY THE SAME AUTHORS THE LIGHTNING CONDUCTOR THE PRINCESS PASSES MY FRIEND THE CHAFFEUR LADY BETTY ACROSS THE WATER THE BOTOR CHAPERON SCARLET RUNNER SET IN SILVER LORD LOVELAND DISCOVERS AMERICA THE GOLDEN SILENCE THE GUESTS OF HERCULES BY MRS. C. N. WILLIAMSON THE ADVENTURE OF PRINCESS SYLVIA THE CAR OF DESTINY AND ITS ERRAND IN SPAIN BY c. N. AND A. M. ^ILLIAMSON AUTHORS OF "THE LIGHTNING CONDUCTOR" ETC. WITH A FRONTISPIECE SIXTH AND CHEAPER EDITION METHUEN & CO. LTD. 36 ESSEX STREET W.C. LONDON firtt Published . . September igrt Stctmd Edition . . September l<)ot> Third Edition . . . October 1906 Fourth Edition . . A u fust /07 Fifth Edition . . . September igil Sixth Edition (it. tut) Junt H)i* TO A DEAR AND VALUED FRIEND THE DOWAGER LADY DALRYMPLE OF NORTH BERWICK WK DEDICATE THIS SPANISH STORY C N. AND A. M. WILLIAMSON CONTENTS CHA. FAGH I. THE KING'S CAR . .... I II. THE GIRL ...... 8 III. THE GUEST WHO WAS NOT ASKED . . 1 8 IV. "I DON'T THREATEN I WARN" . .3 V. A MYSTERY CONCERNING A CHAUFFEUR . . 34 VI. PUZZLE: FIND THE CAR . . . .40 VII. THE IMPRUDENCE OF SHOWING A HANDKERCHIEF 47 VIII. OVER THE BORDER ..... 57 IX. A STERN CHASE ..... 63 X. THE UNEXPECTEDNESS OF MISS O'DONNEL . 72 XI. MARlA DEL PILAR TO THE RESCUE . . .84 XII. UNDER A BALCONY ..... Q2 XIII. WHAT HAPPENED IN THE CATHEDRAL . . 95 XIV. SOME LITTLE IDEAS OF DICK'S . . . 108 XV. HOW THE DUKE CHANGED .... I2O XVI. A SECRET OF THE KING'S . . . .132 XVII. LIKE A THIEF IN THE NIGHT . . .145 XVIII. THE MAN WHO LOVED PILAR . . .156 XIX. A PARCEL FOR LIEUTENANT O'DONNEL . . 164 XX. THE MAGIC WORD . . . . .169 viii CONTENTS CHAP. PAG* xxi. THE DUCHESS' HAND . . . .178 XXII. THE LUCK OF THE DREAM-BOOK . . 192 XXIII. THE GLORIFICATION OF MONICA . . .211 XXIV. THE GOODWILL OF MARIQUITA . . .226 XXV. WHAT CORDOBA LACKED . . . .245 XXVI. IN THE PALACE OF THE KINGS . . .254 XXVII. MOONLIGHT IN THE GARDEN . . .267 XXVIII. LET YOUR HEART SPEAK .... 279 XXIX. THE GARDEN OF FLAMING LILIES . . 284 XXX. THE HAND UNDER THE CURTAINS . . 301 XXXI. BEHIND AN IRON GRATING . . . 312 XXXII. ON THE ROAD TO CADIZ . . . -323 XXXIII. THE SEVEN MEN OF ECIJA . . . 338 XXXIV. THE RACE ...... 348 XXXV. THE MOON IN THE WILDERNESS . . -357 XXXVI. WILES AND ENCHANTMENTS . . -372 XXXVII. DREAMS AND AN AWAKENING . . .387 XXXVIII. THE FOUNTAIN ..... 399 xxxix. "DAY AFTER TO-MORROW" . . 407 XL. THROUGH THE NIGHT .... 420 XLI. THE FIFTH BULL AND AFTER . . . 430 THE CAR OF DESTINY CHAPTER I THE KING'S CAR " 1\ l\ OTOR to Biarritz ? You must be mad," said 1V1 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 fiancte? 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 2 THE CAR OF DESTINY 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 Fifth ; 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 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 re- leased, 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 THE KING'S CAR 3 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 any- thing 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, 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 4 THE CAR OF DESTINY Cornish Trevenna, and changed Cristobal, my middle name, into Christopher. We took our first meal in the restaurant, and every- one 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 Tre- venna." " 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. M 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, had already heard all about the King's automobile, and was primed with particulars. He leaned across to describe its appear- ance, 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 ; blonde, violet-eyed, with radiant complexions ; 6 THE CAR OF DESTINY but one seemed to me beautiful as the Blessed Damo- zel 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 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 conven- tional 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. Vet 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. 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. If she were the Princess who was to be Queen of Spain, I would follow her to THE KING'S CAR 7 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 hd come. 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 would 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. 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 in Biarritz," I answered. It was true. I needed to find out whether she was the Princess, or just a girl. CHAPTER 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 every- one 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 Marque's 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 THE GIRL 9 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 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 10 THE CAR OF DESTINY 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 ; 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 THE GIRL ii 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. We stayed on at Biarritz, but I behaved with cir- cumspection, 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 depres- sion, perhaps repented his hardness. He found several Parisian friends at Biarritz, and when we had been 12 THE CAR OF DESTINY there for three days, 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 charring. 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 sup- posed 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." u Flattered your vanity. However, I haven't told THE GIRL 13 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 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 con- nection 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, and 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." 14 THE CAR OF DESTINY " He's coming here to stop with his mother, the old Duchess, who's been spending the winter at Biairitz. 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." " 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 some- thing 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 Sevilla ? " THE GIRL 15 "If her house is there. I'm telling you what I've been told." " The principal house of the Duke is in Sevilla, though he has a place near Granada, and a flat in Madrid as a substitute for a fine house that was burned down." " Then Sevilla'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 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 some- thing to come of it." " You're certain the invitation's been accepted ? " " Certain. Angele 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 1 6 THE CAR OF DESTINY will be, says de la Mole. There's been much 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'll 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 Mer- cutio, I'll be ready to take up the role at a moment's notice, all for the sake of your beaux yeux. Well, you're right There's something queer about you, Ramon, 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 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" THE GiRL 17 " 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. jf CHAPTER HI 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, is THE GUEST WHO WAS NOT ASKED 19 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. Probably it was foolish and conceited, but I could not resist playing up to the r61e 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 dis- agreeably. 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 dis- tance, he was recognisable 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 20 THE CAR OF DESTINY succession with Juliet Capulet, I could bear my r61e 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, lest 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. " 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 GUEST WHO WAS NOT ASKED 21 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 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 portiere 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 gill sat down, carefully leaving no room for me, even had I 22 THE CAR OF DESTINY 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 Marque's de Casa Triana. Have you ever heard that name before, Lady Monica ? " " Yes," she answered frankly. " I heard it yesterday. From Angele 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 ? " Lady Monica dropped her head and did not answer, but the little hands were pressed tightly together. THE GUEST WHO WAS NOT ASKED 23 " 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 glori- ously 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 24 THE CAR OF DESTINY 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. 1 " " I think it must be so ; because there was never any- thing like that first minute when you looked at me." "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 hand- some 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 THE GUEST WHO WAS NOT ASKED 25 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." " 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." 26 THE CAR OF DESTINY " 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 presenti- ment 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." I could not help smiling, though rather bitterly. " You've heard about my adventure in Barcelona ? " " Yes, from Angele. 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 portiere for Lady Vale- A von. THE GUEST WHO WAS NOT ASKED 27 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 Marque's 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. 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 ? " 28 THE CAR OF DESTINY " 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 exaggerat- ing. 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, Marques 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 hypnotized you, has reached THE GUEST WHO WAS NOT ASKED 29 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 " 1 waited for no more. CHAPTER IV I DONT 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, Marque's 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 "I DONT THREATEN I WARN" 31 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 would be a 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- A von 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 Marque's 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. 32 THE CAR OF DESTINY 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. " 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 bother- ing about love, couldn't you wait till the age of twenty- seven and a quarter, go quietly over to my country v. ith 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 ? " "I DONT THREATEN I WARN" 33 " A rational age ? " " Over eighteen, anyhow. I believe you Latins have a fancy for these little white ingenues, who don't know which side their bread's buttered, or how to say any- thing 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." " Angele de la Mole will do what she can for you." " I hope so. Then everything else must depend on the girl." 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?" CHAPTER 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 Mouris- cot, 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 pas? 84 A MYSTERY CONCERNING A CHAUFFEUR 35 Lady Vale- Avon in the street without being recognised, and once got near enough to slip into Monica's hand a note I had hastily scribbled on the leaf of a notebook. " Are you willing that I should try my luck again with your mother ? " I had written. " If not, will you consent to a 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 mis- understand 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. 36 THE CAR OF DESTINY Anyway, if I were there they'd somehow 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 Angele and me be alone together for a minute if she can help it. The day after the ball we were having a talk in my room when mother came, and perhaps guessed I had been telling Angele things. Since then I haven't been allowed to go to Angele's ; and though Angele 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 papers, nevertheless I heard of it ; and the day after, Made- moiselle 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 Car- mona in Sevilla, 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, A MYSTERY CONCERNING A CHAUFFEUR 37 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 Angele 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 Angele 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 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 chauffeur- ing; and at this time understood an automobile, and 38 THE CAR OF DESTINY 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, 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." A MYSTERY CONCERNING A CHAUFFEUR 39 " 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'll 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, what- ever 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. CHAPTER 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 auto- mobile, 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 importa- tion, 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 " PUZZLE: FIND THE CAR 41 " 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." " 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. M 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-ques- tionings 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 ? " 42 THE CAR OF DESTINY " 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." " 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 con- dition." " 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 PUZZLE: FIND THE CAR 43 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 Biaritz 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 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 44 THE CAR OF DESTINY 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 VVaring's monogram, in execrable taste, put on the doors ; while last and most important change of all, from being number A 12,901, the automobile became illegally but convincingly, M 1 4,3 1 7. 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 Mercedes ; 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 grey, covered car ; I couldn't get near enough PUZZLE: FIND THE CAR 45 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 ? " 46 THE CAR OF DESTINY " 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 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 ? " CHAPTER VII THE IMPRUDENCE OF SHOWING A HANDKERCHIEF ~^IFTEEN minutes later we were off. JL 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 47 48 THE CAR OF DESTINY 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 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 approach- ing 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 answer- ing to bring us to a standstill, while he peered at our wheelcaps. IMPRUDENCE OF A HANDKERCHIEF 49 The deceitful name, glittering up to his eyes, so evi- dently 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 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 4 So THE CAR OF DESTINY 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 re- marked drily. " 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 he 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." 11 Let's rush it," said I. " Too risky. You'd feel such a limp ass to be de- tained by a fat policeman at the door of Spain, while Carmona and Lady Monica went through, and dis- appeared." " 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. IMPRUDENCE OF A HANDKERCHIEF 51 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 Be*hobie; and next moment our tyres were rolling through a brown mix- ture 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 Fuenterrabfa and the sea, eddying past the little He 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. We turned 52 THE CAR OF DESTINY 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 realised, as I had not fully realised 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 con- tents of the suit-case. When any article puzzled him, he paused ; another precious minute gone. But eventu- IMPRUDENCE OF A HANDKERCHIEF 53 ally, having had a safety-razor explained, he was satisfied with the inspection of the luggage, and indi- cated that it might be replaced. Then came the question of the deposit of money for the car, on enter- ing Spain. Very carefully did the imperturbable official examine each Spanish bank-note we tendered ; laboriously did he make out 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 " Hurray ! " 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, seftor," 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 mustache, the grey buck- skin gloves." (Carmona had noticed everything.) " Our 54 THE CAR OF DESTINY instructions are to prevent the Marques 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, sefior." 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, sefior. I am sorry, but it is my duty to detain that gentleman. If there is an error there will be apologies." " 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. " Sefior, 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," IMPRUDENCE OF A HANDKERCHIEF 55 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 Senor George Smith, you will be free as soon as the photograph of the Marques 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." " 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 notebook, a greasy and forbidding one. " It is satisfactory," he said with dignity ; " you can proceed, senores." The engine had not been stopped during the scene ; 56 THE CAR OF DESTINY 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 I run 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. CHAPTER 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 con- cerned, 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 57 58 THE CAR OF DESTINY 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 Marque's de Casa Triana, and he would be free to rejoin his fellow-travellers. 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 where- abouts 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. OVER THE BORDER 59 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 project- ing 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 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 ; inter- lacing 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 60 THE CAR OF DESTINY 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." 41 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 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 Sevilla. And Carmona may mean to travel by way of Madrid, through Vitoria and Burgos, or he may mean to take a road which Leva- vasseur in Biarritz told me was better, steering for Sevilla vid Santander and Salamanca. It depends on whether he wants to stop at the capital, I suppose. Anyhow, as he's unconsciously making our arrange- ments as well as his own, there's nothing for it but we must halt until he passes and gives us our lead." OVER THE BORDER 61 " 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 Angele 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 Angele 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 Angele 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. Angele 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." "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 62 THE CAR OF DESTINY 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 indiarubber 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 with some of the favt 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 civilisa- tion. Here's San Sebastian, and here's a cafe close to where Carmona must pass, so let's stop and lie in wait" CHAPTER IX A STERN CHASE WE were on the outskirts of San Sebastian, and to reach the cafe" 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 ver- mouth, sitting at a little iron table outside the cafe* 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 ques- tion 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 63 64 THE CAR OF DESTINY 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 Cris- tina, by whose wish a royal summer villa had risen over the waters of the bay. Owing to this stroke of clever policy, a poor and discontented town was trans- formed 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. But the royal palace, Villa Miramar, was new to me save for the many photographs I had seen of it in Biarritz ; and 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. A STERN CHASE 65 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 moun- tains 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 Penin- sular 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 First. 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 snowpeaks. 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. 5 66 THE CAR OF DESTINY 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 curv- ing waves, spattering from head to foot the few way- farers 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 im- proved. The place was Tolosa, and at the sound of our motor in the distance, a cry of " Automovile, auto- movile," 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 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 A STERN CHASE 67 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 experi- ence 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 dis- tress 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. Evecy 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 "11 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 mttier 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 land- scape darkened into desolation. The bleak corner of the world towards which we were speeding had that formless, featureless look which one sees on common 68 THE CAR OF DESTINY 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 re- minder 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 BiarritE 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 A STERN CHASE 69 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, there- fore Carmona's car must stop for an hour or two, and it was clear now that he would go by way of Burgos ; consequently, it was on the cards that Angele de la Mole's letter would be delivered by hand. We sneaked stealthily into Vitoria, glancing fur- tively 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 I run, 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 70 THE CAR OF DESTINY 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 unforgettable picture. Another wild, April storm was boiling up, and where we 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 back- ground for lace-framed faces, and the vivid colours of little children's cloaks. For a single instant I forgot even Monica, in the A STERN CHASE 71 tingling sensation that the life ot 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, sefior," murmured a Spanish voice, as two Spanish eyes looked up hopeful of pesetas into mine. CHAPTER X THE UNEXPECTEDNESS OF MISS ODONNEL I THINK that not once did Carmona or anyone else in the Lecomte see 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 sefiores, whose long brown or indigo capos trailed over their mules' backs, smiled thought- fully 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 dis- 78 UNEXPECTEDNESS OF MISS O'DONNEL 73 lodged, 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, 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 grati- tude. 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. Remember- ing 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 like a 74 THE CAR OF DESTINY 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 admira- tion, 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. 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 farther 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 Pancorvo, 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 UNEXPECTEDNESS OF MISS ODONNEL 75 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 Pancorvo 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 startling 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 realise 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 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 ; yet 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. Some- times you could have fancied, from a sudden outburst of radiance on a distant hilltop, that a rainbow had 7 6 THE CAR OF DESTINY 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 Cat61ica 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 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 77 choose. He would go to the best ; consequently un- obtrusive 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 Angele'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 business- like air, I said in Spanish, " Have you some people here who came in a red automobile ? They ought to have arrived this evening." 78 THE CAR OF DESTINY " No, seftor," replied one of the men. " We have a party staying for the night who came in a grey auto- mobile." Good fellow, how well he played into my hands! Hiding 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 seflor who came in the grey auto- mobile 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. UNEXPECTEDNESS OF MISS O'DONNEL 79 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, melli- fluous 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. "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 monopolised 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 Andalucfan voice, with an Andalucfan accent melli- fluous as Andalucfan 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 Andalucfa ; 80 THE CAR OF DESTINY 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 pallor ; 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 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." " Angele 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. UNEXPECTEDNESS OF MISS O'DONNEL 81 " 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 sefiorita," 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 " " Senor," announced Colonel O'Donnel, grieved at Dick's distress ; " no entiendo." "Habla usted espanol?" asked the girl. "No Inglees, we, 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 thought you couldn't be, but " " Si, si," the Cherub reassured him, nodding. 82 THE CAR OF DESTINY " O'Donnel. Aw right." He laughed so contagiously that we laughed too ; and I found my heart warming to these unexpected, surprising friends of Angele de la Mole's. 11 Me Marfa del Filar Ine*s O'Donnel y Alvarez," the girl introduced herself. Angele 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 Angele de la Mole's Spanish-speaking Irish friends (which she must have refra'ned 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 right. Yes." When she thus displayed the store of her accomplish- ments, punctuated with dimples, any man not head UNEXPECTEDNESS OF MISS CTDONNEL 83 over ears in love with another girl, would have given his eyes to kiss her. I was sorry for Dick. As for me I found myself longing to tell Dona Marfa del Filar Ine*s 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 ! CHAPTER XI MARlA 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 Andaluda), Seflor 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'Donnels" 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 Angele. 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 Angele's way of leaving it open for me to introduce myself as I pleased ; but now there was no H MARlA DEL FILAR TO THE RESCUE 85 secret with which I would not have felt myself 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 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 ex- clamation " 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 Marfa, 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 ? * 86 THE CAR OF DESTINY 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 ! " Filar 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 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 was 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 his motive for engaging himself. With the first breath of the storm the Duke was off; and the discarded fiancte entered as a novice the con- vent 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 ganaderia a bull-farm of the Duke's near Sevilla," he explained indulgently. MARlA DEL PILAR TO THE RESCUE 87 " The places adjoin ; and as I've allowed this Pilarcita to grow up a wild girl, very different from the young ladies of Sevilla she should emulate, she has made friends of the Duke's cattle. There was, 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 1 .' That's like him," said I. " There's nothing he wouldn't do against an enemy, or to gain a thing he wanted," said Filar, 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." " Which won ? " asked the girl. " My father." " Be sure he will remember," said she. " Oh, how I wish we could help you ! it. 1 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 88 THE CAR OF DESTINY 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 Crist6bal." " 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 Crist6bal 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 Angele's friend, and she's doing all she can for you. He'd walk through fire to please Angele. 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. " You don't understand yet," she insisted. " It's a wonderful idea. You see, papa and I have met the MARlA DEL PILAR TO THE RESCUE 89 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 Crist6bal was a little boy, and then no more than once or twice, when he came out to his ganaderia. 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 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 Irun. Well, it was clever of you to change with your chauffeur ; but all the same, if you go on, dressed as the 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 Crist6bal ? ' He'd simply have to accept you as Crist6bal, although he might find Crist6bal rather like that troublesome Marques de Casa Triana." " Casa Triana is also Cristobal," I laughed. " Ram6n Cristobal." " All the better. We shouldn't any of us have to fib. I always said Crist6bal 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 Cristdbal 90 THE CAR OF DESTINY 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 impudenct to suggest our going in your automobile, papa and I ? What with us, and San Crist6bal, you ought to get your foot on the Duke's head." " But what about your brother Crist6bal ? " "Oh, he! We must all thank San Crist6bal 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 Angele, 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 Ramon?" " 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 Crist6bal," 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 MARfA DEL FILAR TO THE RESCUE 91 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 intro- duced," remarked Dick, in his slow Spanish. "You will see it," exclaimed Filar; and with this, the door opened and the other Crist6bal came in. CHAPTER 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 Angele 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. Filar 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 Crist6bal 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 morn- ing 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 find a sanctuary OS UNDER A BALCONY 93 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 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 counterplotting, 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 at once. Madrid and Sevilla would probably be waking up to 94 THE CAR OF DESTINY fullest life at this hour; but in provincial towns one goes to bed early because there is nothing more amus- ing to do. At eleven the windows ol 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. 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 suede 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 CHAPTER XIII WHAT HAPPENED IN THE CATHEDRAL BEFORE six next morning, Cristobal 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 ad- vantage of the other Crist6bal, 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. M 96 THE CAR OF DESTINY 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 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 I run, 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 WHAT HAPPENED IN THE CATHEDRAL 97 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 inter- pret 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 annoy- ance. Then I 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 7 98 THE CAR OF DESTINY 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 any- where. 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 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 Cristobal'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 Cristobal'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 WHAT HAPPENED IN THE CATHEDRAL 99 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 Cardena, 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 Cafe" of the Cid " on my way to the cathedral ; and the first land- mark 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 cer- tainly arrive, for 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 ioo THE CAR OF DESTINY 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 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 inspira- tion. 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 ironwork to the octagonal lantern, a miracle of Plateresque design, which lifted itself, clear and bright, above the centre of the great church. Per- haps 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 WHAT HAPPENED IN THE CATHEDRAL 101 sacristy; and, I am half-ashamed to say, had just dedicated a candle to propitiate San Crist6bal, 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 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 accident or design. Now the Duchess and the Cherub were talking together. Now the O'Donnels 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 Crist6bal ? " I heard her sud- denly ask Carmona, in a voice raised to such clear distinctness that I guessed she had seen a uniform behind the ironwork of the half-open chapel door. 102 THE CAR OF DESTINY " 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 Crist6bal 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 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 Rontgen rays. His face is not one easy to read ; but for once the windows of his mind were wide open. If he had recog- nised 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 yester- day when he saw Monica lean forward, blushing, to gaze at a masked man in a motor-car. He realised the likeness between Crist6bal 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 WHAT HAPPENED IN THE CATHEDRAL 103 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 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 ex- plaining him, and murmured so many funny things that even Carmona was obliged occasionally to burst out laughing. 104 THE CAR OF DESTINY Meanwhile, Monica, Filar, 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 Filar, " 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 Sefiorita 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 her heart ; and I would have given a year of WHAT HAPPENED IN THE CATHEDRAL 105 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 Cristobal's my name too, as well as her brother's, the thing has been managed without a fib. Brother Cristobal has leave. Friend Crist6bal 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 Sevilla ; 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 io6 THE CAR OF DESTINY made up a plan between them that I shall be left in peace till Sevilla, 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, 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 probably 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 perhaps 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 little time together to discuss impos- sibilities." " 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. WHAT HAPPENED IN THE CATHEDRAL 107 " 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. Cristobal, go instantly and stare as hard as you can at San Gerdnimo 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." CHAPTER XIV SOME LITTT.E IDEAS OF DICK'S WE said good-bye presently, still in the cathedral, all very polite and conventionally interested in each other's affairs. Filar 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, Sefior 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 103 SOME LITTLE IDEAS OF DIGITS 109 noticing that Crist6bal looked rather like someone else. He caught a glimpse of Sefior Waring's face yester- day, in the car, and it will be safer for him not to see us in that car until we have gone on a little farther. 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 ? " 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 followed. 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 no THE CAR OF DESTINY 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 held Alfonso of Leon prisoner there He " " How do you spell him ? " asked Dick, cautiously. " C i d, of course." " 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, 1 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." SOME LITTLE IDEAS OF DICK'S in 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 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 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 H2 THE CAR OF DESTINY 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 comfort- able," murmured the Irish-Spaniard. " Besides, it is vulgar to be too rich, and makes one's neighbours un- happy. 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." " 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." SOME LITTLE IDEAS OF DICK'S 113 " Still, we are poor," said Pilar. " New brother, pray be careful of Cristobal's clothes," and she laughed mer- rily. " It will be a long time before he can afford to buy others." " And all that copper eating its head off under- ground," gasped Dick. " We have cousins who are prouder than we about such things," said Pilar. " Two girls and their mother, who live in Sevilla. 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 Sevilla, 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 come 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 re- sented 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 8 114 THE CAR OF DESTINY would throw up his arm suddenly, and the dog, think- ing 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 across the river-bed ; had a fleeting glimpse of Venta de Baftos ; 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 dwell- ings, 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, big-headed 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 hill- SOME LITTLE IDEAS OF DICE?S 115 side ; 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 Duefias, where fair Isabel la Catolica met Ferdinand in the making of that 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 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, n6 THE CAR OF DESTINY 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 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 SOME LITTLE IDEAS OF DICK'S 117 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 doubt- less 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 Crist6bal 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 ; (" Much too good for him, since the world would have n8 THE CAR OF DESTINY 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 Bias 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 Inquisi- tion ? " 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-ft which he organised. 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, sefior ; 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 facade, 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 Berru- guete, faultlessly modelled, so vivid and beautiful as to SOME LITTLE IDEAS OF DIGITS 119 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 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. CHAPTER XV HOW THE DUKE CHANGED " T ECOMTE getting ready, sir," were Ropes' first I ^ 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 60 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 leav- ing town, it gave us an assurance that it would not make for Salamanca ; but there was still doubt as to 120 HOW THE DUKE CHANGED 121 its movements. It could go to Madrid direct over the snow heights of the Sierra Guadarrama, or it could pay a visit to the Escorial. 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 wijid was bitter cold, and Filar shivered in her cloak, 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 circum- stances ; 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 countrywomen first ; and any- how couldn't stand a girl who wasn't able to converse rationally. Yet Filar, if she were to talk with him in his own tongue, must perforce limit her scintillations to " V-ary 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 had no 122 THE CAR OF DESTINY 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 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 ran after 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 HOW THE DUKE CHANGED 123 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 astonish- ing 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 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 moun- tain world, still in the playground of vanished giants, winding along a road as wild as the way to Monte- negro. 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 124 THE CAR OF DESTINY 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 1 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 Filar, 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 toe uoxen 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 Filar was left in the car, with Ropes HOW THE DUKE CHANGED 125 driving, while we three men, knee deep in snow, set oar 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 over- heated motor. All the extra power of the Lecomte gave no advan- tage over the Gloria here. Fate had set the stage for us, and we must obey the cue. No ingenuity of Pflar'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 M Shall you keep out of the way ? " asked Dick ; for we were still screened from Carmona's sight by our 126 THE CAR OF DESTINY 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. " How do you do ? " said I, in Andaluz as lazy as the other Cristobal 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, Senor 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 delighted. This seemed ominous for me, and I would have given something to read his thoughts. HOW THE DUKE CHANGED 127 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 Senorita Filar 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 Filar 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 cir- cumstances must have puzzled her. As to the Duchess, her large face was hidden behind a thick screen of grey 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, senor ? " 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, 128 THE CAR OF DESTINY with a twist of the starting handle, the tired motor quivered to its iron entrails. There was a sudden awaking of carburettor, 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 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 HOW THE DUKE CHANGED 129 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 ncses 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 con- sider pros and cons. It would be a terrible strain for his animals to drag such a great weight, but oh, cer- tainly 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. 9 130 THE CAR OF DESTINY 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 ! (9-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 follow- ing 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 ; never- theless 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 HOW THE DUKE CHANGED 131 i tonneau. A conversation worth having would have been hopeless at such close quarters, 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 bound for the Escorial, 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 Escorial from outside, and had been depressed to the verge of tears. Often since he had consoled himself for various mis- fortunes by reflecting that, at worst, he was not endur- ing them at the Escorial. 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 Escorial." "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 realising that I meant to see the thing through, Dick urged no further objections. CHAPTER XVI A SECRET OF THE KING'S T)ILAR said that the oxen were idiotic dears to A break their hearts for nothing, not even a per- centage 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 waggons 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, Car- mona 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 A SECRET OF THE KING'S 133 O'Donnel stopped me. " I wrote your name, Cris- tobal," 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 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 break- neck 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 Escorial. 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 limit- less 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 134 THE CAR OF DESTINY 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 Escorial 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 than the one destroyed on Saint Lawrence's own day, in the battle of San Quentin. " Wouldn't the Escorial be hideous if it were any- where else but just here ? " asked Pilar. She was right ; for on the Sierra it seemed an ex- pression 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 ^fonda opposite the Escorial; 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. A SECRET OF THE KING'S 135 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 some- thing 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 exist- ence.' Only the Royal Family know, a few privileged people about the Court, and the guardians of the Escorial. As for me, I was told by someone here someone whom I myself placed in the palace." My curiosity was excited ; and even Diqk, who re- sented this 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 privileges 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 136 THE CAR OF DESTINY 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, un- attended, 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 con- scious 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 exist- ence ; 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 ; 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, A SECRET OF THE KING'S 137 " Let us go. This room seems haunted with evil. 1 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 wa.xfJs/0ros. " 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 under- ground dungeon where an enemy an inconvenient wretch like me, for instance suffered the pangs of starvation. 138 THE CAR OF DESTINY 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, " and blood, even wicked old blood like Philip's, which I used to think, when I read about him in his- tory, I'd love to shed. No, I won't go in, thank you." Filar 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 fdsforos 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, lighted them on the Duke's box ; then, bending my head low, and pushing in one shoulder at a time, I squirmed through the aper- ture. 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 A SECRET OF THE KING'S 139 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 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 Crist6bal 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 140 THE CAR OF DESTINY 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, Crist6bal. Rafael Cal- menare 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 Filar. Neither could do anything to help 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 Crist6bal ! " 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 Escorial 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 A SECRET OF THE KING'S 141 for an excuse to keep us at the Escorial 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 masquer- ading 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 con- gratulate 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," Filar said. " Crist6bal ? " " Yes," I answered. " Poor little Rafael ; a good fellow, wasn't he ? " " Very good," I replied. To what was she working up? 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 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 142 THE CAR OF DESTINY 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 Crist6bal t wJwm you know so well y is in that dreadful place and can't get out, because the Seflor Duque shut him in by mistake and broke the spring." " I do not find that it is broken, sefiorita," answered the new voice. " I couldn't make it work," Carmona said hastily. Click ! went the spring under skilled fingers. The door sliding back rve 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 Crist6bal," said he. " I am glad to have been even of this slight service. I hope, seftorito, 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, Sefior Duque," replied his A SECRET OF THE KING'S 143 ex-servant, expressionless as before, and quietly respect- ful to all. " I could not forget the date, for the Sefior Colonel and the senorita, as well as the senorito him- self, were always very good to me." The Duke was silenced. The test invented by himself had failed. Calmenare accepted me as Crist6bal 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, Filar 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 Crist6bal 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 sefiorita 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. 144 THE CAR OF DESTINY " What would you have done ? " asked Filar, breath- less. " 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." CHAPTER 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 Escorial 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 Sevilla), 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 10 146 THE CAR OF DESTINY 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 Sevilla 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. The O'Donnels recommended to us the Hotel Ingle's, 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 dis- covered 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. LIKE A THIEF IN THE NIGHT 147 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 Crist6bal whose medal now adorned our Gloria and shaped our destinies must have twisted the steer- ing 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. 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. Sefiorita O'Donnel, shall you be in Madrid long ? " " Only a few days," said Filar. " 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- A von cut in before the girl could make us a present of Carmona's plans. " We may take some excursions. As there's a firle road to Barcelona, we may go there and to Mont- serrat ; and the Duke has said something about Bilbao " " But, mother, surely we're going to Seville for Holy Week ! " cried Monica. 148 THE CAR OF DESTINY " 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, Filar 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 Sevilla as soon as they can." " Something tells me so too," said I. " And some- thing tells me that Carmona's errand at the Ministry of War is to find out whether Lieutenant Crist6bal 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. Crist6bal is on leave ; and he told his brother-officers that he expected to go with his family to Sevilla. 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 Crist6bal to let him meet in Biarritz any common acquaintance of his and Carmona's." " I'm putting my faith in San Crist6bal," 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." "He hasn't been as often here as Pilar and I," said the Cherub, " so he knows few people. Still, Crist6bal's uniform should now be put away, and Cristobal should wear civilian clothes." " He certainly will," I answered, laughing. And LIKE A THIEF IN THE NIGHT 149 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 bullfighters whose little twisted pigtails of black hair appeared under their tilted hats ; ragged but handsome beggars think- ing themselves as good, if not as fortunate, as their brothers in broadcloth ; merry boys shouting the even- ing papers, black-eyed women and men selling cheap but colourful jewellery, postcards, 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 ISO THE CAR OF DESTINY into the deep blue shadows of the Calle Echegaray to our hotel. Already I had discovered that it is not the habit of Spanish 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 start- ing 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 senorita ; 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 realise 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. LIKE A THIEF IN THE NIGHT 151 " Which one ? " " Spanish girls." We dined in great spirits that evening, in the big scarlet and gold restaurant ; and in rich, red Marque's 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 carriages and state coach. The company was interesting to watch. Leoncavallo had as a guest the famons ex-bullfighter 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 Filar 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 drop- ping 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 useless, sir. I found the garage 152 THE CAR OF DESTINY 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 dismount- ing 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 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 thing, and makes me feel murderous. Did they describe the supposed chauffeur ? " " They did, sir ; and I expected to recognise 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 LIKE A THIEF IN THE NIGHT 153 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 outrage, 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. " 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." Ropes' expression was so childlike that Dick and I burst out laughing. " You demon ! " I said. " How did you get at the car ? " 154 THE CAR OF DESTINY " 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 Cristobal 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 Crist6bal'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. LIKE A THIEF IN THE NIGHT 155 " 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 father, Filar 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 Filar 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. CHAPTER 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. " I've been thinking," said he, and I found myself cheering up at the statement; for I had noticed that, though the Cherub often had the air of being silent through laziness ; that from his mellifluous Andaluz he discarded all possible consonants as he would discard the bones of fish ; yet, with his murmurings, invariably rolled from his tongue some jewel of good sense. " We have a friend near Madrid," said he, " who has an automobile. I know little about such things ; but when I heard that you had a twenty-four horse-power Gloria, I thought, ' It is the same as the Conde de Roldan's.' It will be days before your new parts can come from Paris, even if you send Ropes ; and there are few automobiles on sale here, if any. It's a hundred chances to one you could get parts to fit your car in that way. But if Don Cipriano's car is what I think, he will give you what you want. When the new parts arrive, they will be for him." 1M THE MAN WHO LOVED FILAR 157 " Colonel O'Donnel," said Dick, " you and your family are bricks ! " " That's true," said I ; " but if you could persuade your friend to such an act of generosity, I couldn't accept. I " " Oh," said the good man, with cherubic slyness, " he would give his left hand for such a chance to please us ! Perhaps you haven't noticed that my nifta is rather attractive ; but it has not escaped the observation of Don Cipriano." So the wind blew from that quarter ! I threw a glance at Dick, and saw on his face the same ex- pression of disconcerted amour propre I had once seen when a bullet went whistling by his nose. But he said nothing about either missile ; and now it was left for me to justify our appreciation of the senorita. Ordinarily, if there is one thing which the Cherub loves, it is to dawdle, but now he rose without a sigh and remarked that there was no time to waste. He must fetch Pilar. " She will have gone to bed," I objected. The Cherub smiled. Pilar go to bed at half-past ten on her first night in Madrid after months of absence? Not she. Her father was willing to bet that she was at her window looking down upon the street, and wishing she had been born a man that she might be in it. " Night is the time for amusement in Madrid," said he. " One can lie in bed till afternoon without missing anything ; but at night that is the time to be alive here ! And though our home is in the southern country, when we are in Madrid my Pilar and I, we are true Madrilenos. Had she and I been alone, she would have made me take her to the theatre or 158 THE CAR OF DESTINY circus. We should not have got home till one ; and then I should have had to give her supper. Oh, she will be enchanted when I call her back to life ! " With that he trotted off, and before it seemed that he could have explained anything, he had brought Pilar back in triumph, her hat on her head, dimples in her cheeks, and stars in her eyes. " I'm ready ! " she exclaimed. " Ready ? " I echoed. " For what ? " " Why, to drive with you all to Don Cipriano's! What else ? We mustn't lose a minute, or our bad fairy will have time to work some other evil charm before we've remedied the first. Oh, I may be only a girl, and not of importance ; but Don Cipriano thinks me important, and I shall have to be there to make smiles at him. He has a Gloria, and it is twenty-four horse-power. Father sent to order a carriage while I put on my hat and coat. Don Cipriano's place is only half an hour out of Madrid, even with a ' sim6n.' He breeds horses, and oh, such dogs ! Come along come along!" "At this time of night?" said Dick. "He'll think we're mad ! " " It's always early till to-morrow morning in Madrid," laughed Pilar. " Ah, how nice to have an excitement ! " " He won't be at home," said Dick. " Yes, he will. San Crist6bal will keep him there." Before we knew what we were doing, this small Spanish whirlwind had swept us downstairs in her train, into the vehicle which had actually arrived, and out into the midst of a night-scene as lively as a fair. Many shops were open and brilliantly illuminated. Cafe" windows blazed like diamonds ; half the popula- MAN WHO LOVED FILAR 159 tion of Madrid was in the streets, and a stranger might have thought that something unusual had happened ; but Pilar assured us it was " always like that." " You can live in the street if you like, in Madrid," said she, " and I should think lots of quite charming people do. There are sweets and fruit when you're hungry, and water and wine and fresh milk of goats when you're thirsty, cool doorways or nice hot pavements to sleep on when you're tired, with lettuce leaves or a cabbage for a pillow, all at a cost of a penny or two a day; and if you're clever somebody passing by will give you that penny. So, rich or poor, with a palace or no home, you can be happy in Madrid." " I wonder how you'd like New York ? " muttered Dick. " That depends on the person I lived with ! " said Pilar. Soon we had left the gold and crimson glow of the streets, and were out in the blue night. Over the Puente de Toledo we passed, and on along a broad white road. Pilar had said that we would reach our destination in half an hour; but her enthusiasm ran faster than our horses ; and it was nearly midnight when we stopped in front of a tall archway that glimmered in the dark. A clanging bell had to be pulled, and was echoed by a musical baying of many dogs. " The darlings ! " exclaimed Pilar. " I know their voices. It's Melampo, and Cubillon, and Lubina, the dearest pets of all ; named after the dogs who went with the shepherds to see the Christ-child in His cradle you remember so they can never go mad." By this time the gate was open, and a wave of beautiful greyhounds surged round us, although called 160 THE CAR OF DESTINY imperatively back by a man who looked like a cross between a porter and a gamekeeper. Then came a cordial burst of recognition between the Cherub, Pilar, and the servant. We drove into a courtyard, and before we could descend from our carriage the master of the house had appeared at a lighted doorway, tall, brown, ruddy, picturesque in Spanish riding breeches and short coat ; a handsome man of thirty-five, perhaps, whose face lit from surprise to rapture at sight of Pilar. Dick and I came in for a welcome too, though I could see that the Conde de Roldan was not easy in his mind about these young men who seemed on terms of intimacy with his friends. From the courtyard we passed through a doorway into a patio % and from the patio into a nondescript room which could have belonged to no one but a bachelor and a sportsman. There was, however, a mother, and the poor lady would have been torn from her bed to greet the welcome ones, had not the father and daughter protested. To-morrow, if all went well, they would come again, and see dear Dofia Rosita ; but now, let her sleep. We were here on business. " May I explain you ? " Pilar appealed to me. " Don Cipriano is safe. And I want him to be interested." Poor Don Cipriano ! He had visibly a bad half moment, trembling lest we had rushed out to announce my engagement to the adorable Pilarcita ; but it was good to see the light come back to his eyes when he heard that I blind worm had fallen in love with another girl. Clever Pilarcita made this fact clear, so that Don Cipriano's jealous heart might warm to me before he knew what thing was wanted. Dick became tolerable also, as a friend following in the train of my THE MAN WHO LOVED PILAR 161 adventures ; and soon the poor fellow was ready to put not only the gearing of his motor car, but his house and everything in it, at our service. He blessed his patron saint for bringing us to his door, and for permitting him to have ridden home from a distant farm in time to greet us ; he roundly cursed \he Duke of Carmona, consigning him to Purgatory for a longer period than usual ; and when every one of us (except Dick) was in the best of humours with every- body else, we paid a visit to his car. . She might, in all but colour, have been twin-sister to mine. There seemed reason to hope that the pinions of this Gloria would fit the other Gloria, and that no time might be lost in making the experiment the Conde de Roldan volunteered to spin us into Madrid, letting our " sim6n " go back empty. If we deceived ourselves, rather than I should be delayed (said he), his car was mine to take where I would, and the Cherub stepped on my foot to check a refusal. There was a chauffeur in this interesting household, but he was several other things as well, and was a better dog-doctor than the vet. At the moment he was assisting at an addition to the family of Lubina's daughter ; but in any case, Don Cipriano protested, he would have allowed no one to drive us save himself. We raced to Madrid in a fourth of the time we had taken in coming ; and two hours after the moment when we had news of the disaster, we arrived at the garage of my injured Gloria. A somnolent night-porter (one of the few persons in Madrid who appeared to use the night for sleep) let us in ; and at the sound of our entrance the figure of a man sprang from the cushions of my car. Pilar gave a ii 1 62 THE CAR OF DESTINY cry, which changed to a laugh as she saw that it was Ropes. " San Cristobal failed you for a few minutes this evening, didn't he ? But he's going to make up for it now," she said. " And I'm going to see him do it, if it takes all night." In vain did the Cherub try to persuade her that it would be well to let him escort her home, as the experi- ment would be a long affair. Nobody seconded his efforts, and, if they had, ten chances against one that Filarcita would have listened. Never, in all her life, said she, had she known anything like the excitements of the last few days, and it was too probable that she never would again. With this, she climbed into her old place in my Gloria's tonneau, her bright eyes bewitching in the uncertain yellow light ; and enchanted with the pros- pect of retaining her society, Don Cipriano proposed a feast. He would not listen to discussions, but rushed the bewildered watchman off to a neighbour- ing restaurant, whence a waiter appeared with the speed of magic. Supper was ordered ; chicken, salad, champagne, all that could be found of the best ; and dulces for the seflorita. While Ropes and I worked as if for a wager, a swarm of amused waiters came buzzing about the garage, bringing chairs, a table, clattering di.shes, clinking knives and forks, and silver pails wherein tinkled ice embedding gold-labelled bottles. Ropes is unrivalled as a mechanic, and I am not unhandy with tools, so that between us, under the inspiration of Pilar's bright eyes and sayings, we had the pinions out of Don Cipriano's car by the time the THE MAN WHO LOVED PILAR 163 champagne was cold. Then, while corks were popping, the great experiment was tried. "A fit ! a fit ! " I exclaimed, and joyously we drank to the health of the two Glorias. Such tips as they got that night, those waiters and that watchman could never have seen. No doubt they thought us mad, and perhaps we were; but it was partly the fault of San Cristobal. CHAPTER XIX A PARCEL FOR LIEUTENANT CTDONNEL NEVER was such a man as Don Cipriano, Conde de Roldan. Not content with lending me his wings that I might fly while he was left to crawl, he proposed to heap other favours upon the friend of his friends. He offered me an asylum at his place for my re- juvenated car, lest the enemy in reconnoitring should learn our secret before the time; and, better still, he volunteered to visit the camp of that enemy, and dis- cover his plans. Being an acquaintance of the lady whom Carmona had jilted, he was no admirer of the Duke's. Never- theless, he was a member of a club which Carmona frequented when in Madrid, and he thought that the Duke would look in next day. Even if he should decide to proceed by rail, after discovering how " two can play at the same game," such a change of plan would mean delay ; therefore Carmona and his party would spend at least one day in Madrid. Don Cipriano offered to go early to the club, and not to leave until he had seen the Duke. The moment he had any news he would bring it to us. I accepted my new friend's invitation to house the Gloria, as his place was so close to town that Ropes or I could spin her back at short notice ; and at dawn, 164 A PARCEL FOR LIEUTENANT OTJONNEL 165 when merry Madrid was thinking of bed, my car towed out his dismantled one. Pilar and her father had gone home to dream their good deeds over ; Dick, when he heard that we were to drive behind the Conde's horses, developed a headache, and Ropes and I had to carry the business through ourselves. We bathed and breakfasted in the country, and drove to Madrid while the gay world slept. He would now, Don Cipriano announced, spend the day in the city, on watchdog duty ; but as he would have no news until afternoon, I might visit the picture galleries if I liked. " They will make you feel proud of your country," he said ; and so they would, no doubt. But I resolved to sacrifice them in the fear that, after all, Carmona might evade me if I gave him so good a chance. Never had I seen Dick so gloomy as when I re- turned to him, and the black dog was not chased away by my praises of Don Cipriano. He cheered up, how- ever, at the prospect of sightseeing with the Cherub and Pilar : the Cherub martyred ; Pilar joyous in the thought of showing off the Murillos and Velasquez which she adored. They did the Armerfa and picture galleries all the morning, until they were drooping with fatigue ; waggled back in a dilapidated cab, clamouring for their lunch and my tidings ; departed again in the afternoon to finish what they had left undone. Meanwhile I had heard nothing; and the day, spent in waiting for Don Cipriano or for some bit of gossip picked up by Ropes, was long. But five o'clock and Don Cipriano came together. Carmona had been to the club. The Conde de Roldan 1 66 THE CAR OF DESTINY had not spoken to him, but the Duke had talked to another man, a motoring friend of the King's. Per- haps with few others would the Duke have been so expansive. He had said, " I'm only in Madrid for the day. Should have been off this morning, with my mother and two ladies who are going to visit her in Sevilla, but had an accident to my automobile, which has made me a lot of bother. I hope to get away, though, sometime to-morrow." Then he had asked after the health of a certain actress, and the subject had been definitely changed. This was a triumph. I heartily thanked Don Cipriano, all the while feeling a guilty thing ; for if I were loyal to Dick and wished him luck, I must be disloyal and wish defeat for my benefactor. We spoke of the road, which he knew, and said was not too bad ; and about brigands, who were making themselves talked of just then. " You'd better buy arms, if you haven't them," said Don Cipriano ; M but there's not much danger on this side Sevilla." He had brought a road map ; and we were ex- amining it, in the reading-room of the hotel, wondering whether Carmona would take the direct way through Manzanares, Valdepeflas, and Cordova, or another which Don Cipriano considered better, though longer, by Talavera de la Reina, Trujillo, and Zafra, when the concierge came to say a messenger with a parcel wished to see me. " It must be a mistake," I replied. " He asked for el Teniente O'Donnel ; and he has a packet for you." " Bring it in, please, and let me see how it's ad- dressed." A PARCEL FOR LIEUTENANT O'DONNEL 167 " He won't give it up, sir, without seeing you himself. Those were his instructions." I got up impatiently and went into the hall, where a boy in the livery of some shop handed me a small parcel. There was no address upon it, and I wondered if this were not some purchase of Pilar's, sent back to my care. However, I decided to open it, and found nothing inside except a little steel paper-knife with the word Toledo engraved on the black and gold handle. I stared at the thing stupidly for a moment, as I fumbled for a pourboire to give the messenger, when it occurred to me that he might explain the mystery. " Did a lady buy this ? " I asked ; " a young lady, with a tall senor also young, and another middle-aged ? " " A young lady ? yes, sir. But she was with only one senor, and two senoras, both of an age." " You saw them ? " " Yes, sir." " Describe all four, and you shall have two pesetas instead of one." " One senora was Spanish, brunette, fat, with dead eyes in a large, soft face of two chins. The other was tall and foreign, handsome, but with an air ! I would not be her servant. The sefior was distinguished. Dark, with a thin nose that turned down, like his moustache; a face of an old picture; one shoulder higher than the other." " But the young lady ? " " Oh, sir, the senorita was a white and gold angel, made of a sunbeam ! It was she who bought the knife, while the others chose a thing for the tall senora. She quickly gave it and the money to an attendant, with 1 68 THE CAR OF DESTINY the address, saying it must be put into the gentleman's own hand." I gave the boy five pesetas instead of two. A paper-knife with the word Toledo engraved upon it, from Monica for me ! No message, only that ! But was it not in itself a message the only one she could find a way to send? I went back to Don Cipriano. " I've just heard," said I, " that when Carmona starts, he intends to go to Toledo," CHAPTER XX THE MAGIC WORD WHEN the others came back, and the paper-knife was shown, all agreed with me that it could mean but one thing. The best of it was that to go to Toledo the grey car must pass the Conde de Roldan's place where my Gloria lay ; and all we need do would be to await the moment when the Lecomte flashed by. Then we might give Carmona a surprise. None of us doubted that he must guess the cause of his accident, as we guessed at ours ; nevertheless, the blow he had inflicted was far more severe than our retaliation, and he doubtless hoped that, despite our revengeful scratch, he could slip out of Madrid leaving us hors de combat. Don Cipriano dined with us that night, and went with the others to the Teatro Espanol, where the great Guerrero and her husband were acting. It was not thought well for me to appear, lest the Duke should be there, and say to some acquaintance, " You see the O'Donnels. Is that the son who is in the army ? " When they returned, Filar had news. Carmona, with the Duchess, Lady Vale-Avon, and Monica, had all been at the theatre in a box. " I knew that girl was beautiful," said Filar, " but I didn't know how beautiful until to-night ! With her 169 1 70 THE CAR OF DESTINY pearly skin and golden hair among all the dark heads, she gleamed like a pearl among carbuncles, and every- one was looking at her. You know how we admire fair beauties, and how we expect to adore the young queen when she comes. Well, if it had been Princess Ena herself, people could hardly have stared more, and the Duke was delighted. He wants everything that's best for himself, and to have others appreciate it He was so proud of Lady Monica between acts, and kept bending over her as if she belonged to him. I don't think he saw us ; but I was glad you weren't there, or you would have been wild to fly at him." " You make me wild to do that now," I said. " Have a little patience, and you will steal her," said Filar. " If she would only let me ! But she won't." " Who knows what she will be ready to do if they press her ? And after to-night, too ! She seemed half afraid of him, as if she began to realise more and more what he is. Oh, if you weren't here I should want to do some desperate deed and snatch her away myself! He likes having her admired, while she's not yet his ; but he has enough of the Moor in him to shut up a wife, so that no other man should see her beauty. And then presently he would tire, and be cruel." " Don't let's talk of it," said I. " It's not going to happen." Though it was so late before we slept, we were dressed at an unearthly hour according to the Cherub and driving out with the small luggage which accom- panied us on the car, to Don Cipriano's place on the Toledo road. Ropes had spent the night there, and the Gloria was THE MAGIC WORD 171 ready. The luggage was got into place ; and Don Cipriano and his mother a fairy godmother of an old lady, with a white dome of hair under a priceless black lace mantilla were determined to provide us with food and drink as if to withstand a siege. There was a snow-cured ham from Trevelez, the most famed in Andaluci'a. There was delicious home- made bread, cuernos, molletes, and panecillos ; and olives large as grapes. There was white, curded cheese ; quince jam or carne de membrillo ; angels' hair, made of shredded melons with honey ; mazapdn, smelling of almonds, and shaped like figures of saints, serpents, and horses ; oranges from Sevilla and Tarifa ; fat figs dried on sticks ; and, most wonderful of all, a wineskin of the country, so old that the taste of the skin was gone a generation ago,^and plump with as much good red wine as would have filled six bottles. " You will need these things," insisted the old lady, giving the Cherub a friendly pat on the arm, as she encircled Pilar's waist. " It is different on the road between Madrid and Sevilla, from those you have travelled. You will want to lunch out of doors, in the sunshine, for you won't find good things like these at any little venta. I know, for I have been with my son. I am a heroine, my friends say. We will pack everything well for you." " And the wineskin you must hang on the side of the car," said Don Cipriano, all solicitude for our welfare, poor fellow, believing happily, as he did now, that neither Dick nor I was dangerous. " There's no cure for Spanish dust, except Spanish wine. Besides, you're going through wild country, where automobiles are seldom seen. If peasants are inclined to throw i;2 THE CAR OF DESTINY stones, the sight of a good skin of wine should soften them. And what true man would risk damaging a wineskin ? " That fairy godmother, Dofla Rosita, conceived a fancy for Dick, who flirted with her in his bad Spanish so outrageously that she was delighted. He made her feel young again, she said, and it was a shock to find that he was an American. She had not forgiven America for the Cuban war, which she had not under- stood in the least. " But you are not wicked ! " she exclaimed. " I thought all American men were wicked, and would do anything for money. Ay de mi ! I must again pardon Columbus for discovering your country, I suppose ; though I have often said in these last years, how much better if he had left it alone. I used to stop in my carriage near the Crist6bal Colon statue in the Prado, when the war was on, and laugh to watch the people throw things, because they were annoyed with him for the trouble he had brought. Yet now I see there's something to thank him for, after all." This last with a look at Dick which must have melted his American heart like water if she had been of the age of Pilarcita. But what would she have said had she known that indirectly Columbus had sent to Spain a rival for her adored Cipriano ? Ignorance being bliss, the delightful mother and son were a hostess and a host almost too hospitable. As if the hampers stowed in the car were not enough, a tremendous breakfast on a table loaded with flowers was provided for us. But just as we had sat down, at ten o'clock, a servant on duty as scout appeared, panting after a scamper across fields, to say that a motor had passed. Our chauffeur sent THE MAGIC WORD 173 word that it was the motor ; and was ready to start our car. This was the signal for confusion, cries of regret, wishes for good luck, laughter, and exclamations. Filar and the Cherub were persuaded to finish their cups of thick chocolate, flavoured with cinnamon, while Dick and I drank our strong coffee and left our aguardiente, Off we went, in flowery Spanish speech kissing the seftora's feet, while she kissed our hands ; Don Cipriano leaped upon a horse to see us off, all his dogs about him ; and ten minutes later our pneus were pressing the track in the white dust made by the Lecomte. We soon lost sight of gay Madrid, with its domes and spires clear cut against white mountains, to run through a green landscape of growing corn and grape, vineyards framed for our eyes with distant hills flaming in Spanish colours, red and gold. Colonel O'Donnel pointed out an isolated elevation which he said was the exact centre of Spain ; and of course there was a con- vent on its top. Every other hill had a ruined watch- tower, brown against a sky of deeper, more thoughtful blue than Italy's radiant turquoise. Men we met rode upright as statues on noble Andaluz animals, grand as war-horses in mediaeval pictures ; but some did not scorn to turn abruptly aside at sight and sound of our motor, to go cantering across fields to a prudent dis- tance. Carters with nervous mules held striped rugs over the creatures' faces till we had passed ; donkeys brayed and hesitated whether to sit down or run away, but ended in doing neither ; yet no man frowned. Dick said that now, at last, he began to feel he was really in Spain, because we met the right sort of 174 THE CAR OF DESTINY Spanish faces, the only kind he was ready to accept as Spanish. He had been satisfied with the strongly characteristic qualities of everything else (especially the balconies, that hall-mark of domestic architecture in Spain) ; the rich, oily cooking ; the pillows, oh, the stony pillows ! the manners of the people, and the costumes of Castile. But the features of the people hadn't been, till to-day, typical enough to please him. He had expected in the north mysterious looking Basques; then, something Gothic or Iberian, if not Moorish, with a touch of the Berber to give an extra aquiline curve to the nose. But not a bit of it ! Noses were as blunt as in England, Ireland, or America, and might have been grown there. It was only this morn- ing that we had flashed past a few picture-book Spanish features, and fierce, curled moustaches. " Wait till you get farther south," murmured the Cherub ; " you will see the handsome peasants. They put townspeople to shame." " And mantillas I want mantillas," said Dick. " I've only seen one so far, except in the distance at Vitoria. I expected every woman to wear one. Now you, seflorita, owe it to your country." Pilar laughed. " Fancy a mantilla in a motor car. You haven't seen me yet, sefiores, no, not even when I went to the play. When we're at Sevilla, why, then you'll be introduced to the Real Me. Look you, I have but one sole hat in this wide world, beyond this motoring thing I bargained for at Burgos. You've no idea what a hat such a hat as a self-respecting seftorita can put upon the head God made costs in this land of Spain. Twice three times what it would be elsewhere, so travelled women say, and to have a smart one is necessary a trip THE MAGIC WORD 175 at least to Biarritz. As for Dona Rosita, she is old- fashioned, and always wears the mantilla ; indeed, on her wedding tour to Paris she had to buy her first hat in Marseilles, she says ; for thirty years ago, you could hardly find one in Spain. Now, most of the ladies in Madrid wear hats, except for the bullfight ; but in dear Sevilla, it's different. I shall no longer have a headache with the hatpins which pinch these hairs of mine. Santa Marfa Pun'sima, you shall see what you shall see." She spoke as if to me ; but she glanced at Dick, who though he had still to pose as the owner of the car was growing fond of the tonneau, while Ropes drove. Woe betide Don Cipriano if he had seen that glance ! By and by we turned off the main road at Cetafe, and got caught by closed bars at a railway crossing. " We shall probably be here an hour, and might as well lunch," said the Cherub resignedly ; but when a humble-looking luggage train had crept in, it was so impressed with our air of superior importance that, to our surprise, it backed out rather than obstruct our honourable path ; and the gates were wheeled away for us to pass in front of the engine's polite little nose. It was a spin of but fifty miles from Madrid to the olive plantations (the first I'd seen in Spain) near Toledo ; but the road surface was not of velvet ; and we had often to slow down for animals who hated, because they did not understand, that most faithful and loyal of beasts, the automobile. Therefore it was close upon one o'clock when the noble old town rose in wild majesty before us on its granite, horseshoe hill, girdled by the dark gold bed of the Tagus. Madrid seen from afar off had scarcely been impres- 1 76 THE CAR OF DESTINY sive, but this Rome of Spain though we did not approach it by way of the world-famous bridge was grander than any picture had led me to believe. We had seen nothing of the grey car yet, not even a cloud of dust, but we knew it must be here, and every one of us looked forward to watching the face of the Duke when we should march into the dining-room of the best hotel, where by this time he and his party were probably about to lunch. In a few moments I should see Monica, perhaps be as near to her as at the fonda of the Escorial. That was the thought most absorbing ; yet my spirit was on its knees before this ancient throne of kings. I could hardly believe that the sullen yellow stream pounding its way through the gorge, and shouldering aside huge rocks as if they were pebbles, was really the Tagus, enchanted river of my childish dreams the river my father loved the golden river I had scarcely dared hope to see. Not a legend of the Tagus or Toledo that I did not know, I reminded myself dreamily. I knew how, in the grand old days of the city's glory, the Jews of Jerusalem had respectfully sent a deputation to the wise Jews of Toledo, asking : " Shall this man who says He is the Son of God be given up to the Roman law, and die ? " And how the Jews of Toledo had hastened to return for answer : " By no means commit this great crime, because we believe from the evidence that He is indeed the long -looked -for Redeemer." How the caravan had made all speed back, arriving too late ; and how, because of their wisdom and piety, the Jews of Toledo had been spared by the Inquisition when all others burned. THE MAGIC WORD 177 I knew how, in a time of disaster and poverty for Toledo, San Alonzo, a poor man, prayed heartily to the Virgin, in whose lifetime the cathedral had been begun imploring her help for the town ; how she came at his call, and looking about to see what she could do, touched the rock, which throbbed under her fingers like a heart, until all its veins flowed with molten iron ; how this iron was drunk by the Tagus in such draughts that the water became the colour of old gold; and how, after that, the city grew rich and famous through the marvellous quality of its steel, which, the faithful believe, owes its value to the iron-impregnated Tagus. I knew how the King of the Visigoths had here be- come a Christian, and made of Toledo the ecclesiastical capital of Spain. I knew how the Cid had ridden to the city on Babieca, beside treacherous Alonzo. I knew how Philip the Second had been driven away by the haughtiness of the clergy, pretending greater love for Madrid, that town built to humour a king's caprice. I knew how, even as in the mountains round Granada, in every cave among the rocks of the wild gorge, sleeps an enchanted Moor in armour, on an enchanted steed, guarding hidden treasure, or waiting for the magic word which will set him free to fight for his banished rulers. And yet, here was I entering this ancient citadel mighty in history and fable, in an automobile, with a photographic camera ! " But you are a banished prince yourself," said Filar, when I spoke something of what was in my mind " And you've come out of your enchanted cave at the magic word. That magic word is Love." CHAPTER XXI THE DUCHESS 1 HAND HIGH on the hill Colonel O'Donnel pointed out the Alcazar of many vicissitudes, long since turned into a military academy, which has made Toledo to Spain what Woolwich is to England. " There your father and I went to school," said he. " I come every year or two, and wander about with my thoughts." With this, he began bowing right and left to young officers who sauntered inside the gateway. Nearly everyone knew and seemed delighted to see him ; indeed, who could see the excellent Cherub, and not be glad ? He himself was happy. " There go your father and I ! " he exclaimed, picking out the two best-looking infants in a procession of incredibly small boys proudly wearing a smart uniform. " Oh, where are the girls who used to smile at us ? " So we drove into the Moorish-looking stronghold, through a labyrinth of steeply ascending tunnels which were streets. They were so narrow that I would not have believed the car could scrape along without smashing the mud-guards, had not the Cherub valiantly urged us on, with assurances that it could be done. And always we did slide through, the sides of the Gloria so close to open doors and windows that we 178 THE DUCHESS' HAND 179 could have reached into dark rooms, and helped our- selves to loaves of bread, brass cooking vessels, coarse green pottery, jars of flowers, or astonished babies. There was no space for dwellers in these shadowed lanes to rush from their houses before our car, when warned by the " choof, choof " of the motor as we rattled over the " agony stones," that something extra- ordinary was coming ; but mothers shrieked for their offspring, while young girls hailed their friends to the free show ; and men, women, and children jostled each other good-naturedly in every window and door as we approached, pouring out in our wake, though seemingly half afraid even then that the dragon might take to charging back upon them. Beautiful faces peered from behind rusty bars, with eyes to tempt any man to " eat iron," as the saying is. Dark men with sun-warmed eyes, and black heads wrapped in handkerchiefs of scarlet silk, stared curi- ously at Pilar's veil ; and when we emerged from the stone-and-plaster labyrinth, into a wider space where the hotel stands like an ancient palace, we were swamped by the laughing crowd which had formed into a trotting procession behind us. Just as the marble whiteness of the patio cooled our eyes, down the stairs came those with whom my thoughts had raced ahead ; the Duchess of Carmona ; Monica and her mother ; behind them the Duke. Monica grew rose-red at sight of us. Her elders, not in the Duke's confidence concerning the Gloria's disabilities, appeared as little surprised as pleased ; but Carmona's various and visible emotions included extreme astonishment. I looked at him, my cap off for the ladies, smiling and nonchalant as if nothing 1 80 THE CAR OF DESTINY had happened since our last meeting ; and despite the self-control inherited from Oriental ancestors, for an instant he tried in vain to hide mingled rage and bewilderment. Possibly he might have fancied that we had come by train, had not Ropes been starting the car at that moment, en route for some resting-place masquerading as a garage; and the "choof, choof" of my Gloria came in through the open doors like a defiant laugh. Then he must have wondered how, by all that was demoniac, we had contrived to track him to Toledo ! " This is quite a surprise, Sefior Duque ! " said I, as we met in the patio at the foot of the stairs. " Ye es," he answered, tugging at his moustache, and wishing us and our car on some uninhabited planet. " And a great pleasure ! " " Um er of course," he mumbled ; and I dared not meet Monica's laughing eyes, lest our lips should laugh as well. They went to lunch ; but we were not many moments behind, and Pilar, murmuring in my ear, " Cats may look at a king, whether the king likes or not," gaily selected a table next to the others. She then kept up a stream of talk with Monica, exchanging impres- sions of Madrid. " Didn't you love the shops ? " she asked. " And shall you buy Toledo things to-day ; scarf-pins ahd hat-pins and paper-knives ; or did you buy too many yesterday ? " " I think I bought just enough" said Monica, with a quick smile. " But I shall get more here. We're going to a metal workshop, after the cathedral." But this was sheer audacity, and was punished as I feared it would be. THE DUCHESS' HAND 181 Not wishing to pursue with too conspicuous violence, lest we defeat our object, we let Carmona's party leave the dining-room before us. A quarter of an hour later \ve followed, going out into the strange grey streets, haunted by men and women who have made history. Dick (armed with a book by Leonard Williams, greatest of authorities on Spain) was allowed to walk beside Filar, while that most unsuspecting and kindly of chaperons, the Cherub, bestowed his society on me. But, according to his habit, he was often silent, giving me time to dream of Toledo's past. Picturesque enough were the figures of to-day in the old grey capital of the Visigoths, yet they were not as real for me as other figures which only my mind's eye could see. Here was the long, flat fagade of the building legend had chosen as the palace of Wamba the Benefactor the Farmer King. I saw the old man waking to life in the dungeon where the treachery of one loved and trusted had thrown him, dressed in the monkish garb which never again could be changed for robes of state. I saw a haggard company of Jews marching into " Tarshish," scarred and bleeding from the persecutions of Nebuchadnezzar, who had flung them from Jerusalem. I saw Moorish men fighting to take Toledo the "Lookout," "the Light of the World," and fighting again to save it for themselves. There, in the towering Alcazar, had Rodrigo be- trayed his beautiful queen, Egilona, for the still more beautiful Florinda, daughter of Julian, Espatorios of Spain ; at least, so legend said, mingling the romantic music of its ballads inextricably with the deep organ notes of history. Below, on the cliff above the Tagus, 1 82 THE CAR OF DESTINY in the Tower of Hercules, had Rodrigo taken the painted linen cloths from the enchanted casket, and seen the awful vision of the Moorish horde with his own figure fleeing before them, one day when he forgot the prophecy which warned all kings of Spain against entering that mysterious, locked door. Up this narrow street in the town, behind that barred window with its curious cannon-ball decorations, per- haps the incomparable Dofia Flor of Dumas' " Bandit " had smiled and pierced the heart of the " Courier of Love " with her beauty. It was like awaking from a brilliant dream when the Cherub stopped abruptly, to point up at the vast, incongruous bulk of the cathedral towering over us. But there was nothing incongruous in the rich, Gothic splendour within ; and my sole shock of dis- appointment came when I gave up hope of finding Monica, They had punished her by changing their plan of campaign, and I must seek her elsewhere. But I could not wrench my friends from this great monument of Spanish glory, merely because I cared more to look on Monica Vale's face than the face of any saint, carved or painted by a master's hand. I stayed, therefore, finding such consolation as I could in the jewelled gleam of rare old glass, the magnificence of bronze doors ; tombs of kings and heroes ; and all the wonders of gold, silver, pearls, and diamonds which, stored in the sacristy, do honour to the famous Black Virgin, the cathedral's Queen. Coming out again into the town was like stepping with a single stride back from Europe into Africa ; for nowhere can Moslem and Christian civilisations be THE DUCHESS' HAND 183 more closely tangled than in Toledo. Moorish streets were like scimitar strokes cleft deep in the city ; narrow chasms lined with secretive houses, giving here and there a glimpse of some bright, flowery patio, through half-open doors studded with iron bosses, and heavy enough to resist a siege ; yet above the tiled roofs soared Christian spires in the translucent blue. No one cared for us now that we were no longer gods in a car, except an occasional beggar, to whom the Cherub would murmur, " God will aid you, sister ! " " Pardon me, brother ! " and then, changing his mind, drop a penny into a withered old hand, or a pink, childish palm. " They'll leave the shopping to the last, because Lady Monica told us it was to be done first," said Pilar sagely; so we wandered through the shabby aisles of Rag Fair, Pilar hoping against hope to un- earth a treasure; because, did not a man once pick up, for a song, a Greco worth a fortune, and did not one always find something at least amusing in the Rag Fair of Madrid ? Thence we went on to the Moorish mosque, which the Visigoths began, and so to San Juan de los Reyes, which, Pilar said, I must like better than anything else in Toledo, because she did. With an air of possession she explained the votive chains of captive Christians darkly festooning the outer walls, and I did not tell her I had heard the story long ago. She shuddered as she pointed to the crucifix which used to go with the procession of the auto-da-ft. 11 Only think how different times are now ! " said she. " When Philip the Second was going to be married to his bride, not fourteen, a great show in honour of the marriage was a burning of heretics, here in the Zoco 1 84 THE CAR OF DESTINY the market-place of Toledo ! I shouldn't have cared much to see a royal wedding then. I don't even like to look at that crucifix, it gives me such thoughts. But see, aren't those carved stone galleries where Ferdi- nand and Isabella used to hear mass, like two great chased silver goblets? I hope the king and queen never sat there watching the poor wretches bound before marching off to the Zoco to die ; but I'm sure Isabel wouldn't: she was so sweet, she must often have wished she hadn't made that awful promise to Torquemada." " You're Catholic, yet you say that ! " I exclaimed, as we stood looking at the gorgeous shields of Los Reyes Cat61icos. Dick was near, listening with con- cealed eagerness for the girl's answer, and no wonder, since he was Protestant, and not the man to be a turncoat, even for his love. "Oh yes, I'm Catholic," said she. "But," half whispering, " Spaniards, even the most ardent Catho- lics, didn't really love the Inquisition. It was thrust on them ; and I suppose in those brutal old days it was a horrible excitement to see the burnings. It's natural to us Latins to have excitement ; and after years of such dreadful ones as we had in those times, do you wonder the people clamour for bull- fights ? " " Then you don't think we Protestants deserve burn- ing ? " asked Dick, staring at the crucifix. " How can you ask such a question ? " " But you couldn't make a real friend of one, I suppose, or er let yourself care about one much ? " " I should try and convert him or her." u Supposing you couldn't ? " THE DUCHESS 1 HAND 185 *' Then, I'd have to like him or her in spite of all. And he or she would have to leave my re- ligion alone. But I'm tired of solemn things ; and brother Cristobal's dying to buy metal-work." I don't think that Dick knew whether he had been encouraged or not. And he must have remembered that the Conde de Roldan is the best and most eligible of Catholics. Poor Dick ! Perhaps he was beginning to realise how much easier it is to advise another man to be sensible than to be sensible yourself. Pilar had been right in her surmises as to the work- ings of Carmona's mind. When we came to the showroom of the Fabrica de Espadas, where the dusk was shot with a thousand gleams and glitters of strange weapons, there were those we had sought in vain till now. The Duchess, yellow with fatigue, was resting her stout person on a bench in the long, low room, Lady Vale-Avon beside her, looking tired and bored. But Carmona was at the glass-covered counter, begging Monica's advice in the selection of his purchases. His back was towards us as we entered, and, un- noticed by him, we saw him hold up to the light a small, sharp dagger, with a handle beautifully orna- mented. He was indicating with his finger, for Monica's benefit, the delicate tracery upon gold, when, warned by lack of attention and wandering glances on the part of his companion, he turned in our direction. Then, hastily laying down the dagger, he pushed it away as though resenting the intrusion of our eyes. " After all, we went to the Cave of Hercules," said Monica, " and to the house where the Moorish nobles 1 86 THE CAR OF DESTINY were supposed to be murdered ; so we missed you when we got to the cathedral. Seflorita O'Donnel, do come and help me choose presents for some girls at home, in England." She spoke brightly, yet wistfully, as if wondering whether she would be allowed to go back to those girls, a girl herself, and able to call England home. Filar crossed to her at once, and Dick and I followed. The good Cherub tactfully engaged the attention of the Duchess and Lady Vale-Avon, looking so innocent that it was more than they could do to be rude to him. And while the Duke sulked, we picked out wonderful knives and forks for our luncheon-hampers, and thin swordsticks of leather which imitated bamboo and con- cealed blades so flexible that they could be rolled up like watch-springs. " Let's all buy presents for each other, in memory of the day," suggested Dick ; and began by offering Filar a pair of splendid hat-pins. She retaliated with sleeve- links ; so, emboldened by this prelude, I begged Monica to accept a brooch shaped like a shield. " Now I shall never lack protection," said she, with gentle emphasis ; and it was well for me that the Cherub was showing Lady Vale- Avon some marvellous sword passes. " Let me see," the girl went on, when she had defiantly pinned the trinket into her lace cravat, under Carmona's furious frown. " What shall I give you for luck ? Shall it be a dagger? Where's the one you were looking at, Duke?" " I don't know," he answered, so angry with me for my presumption that he could hardly speak, though not daring to show his true feelings and imperil his chances. " It seems to have disappeared. But we must really THE DUCHESS' HAND 187 go at once. My mother is tired, and we still have several things to see before I can take you back to the hotel to rest" Purposely, he spoke in a loud tone, and Lady Vale- Avon heard through the Cherub's honeyed murmurs. She rose, and called Monica, who was swept away without finding the dagger. It was dinner-time when we returned to our hotel ; but Carmona's party did not appear in the dining- room. We lingered on hoping that they would come, until it was useless to hope longer, and as we drank black coffee in the patio, Colonel O'Donnel asked a waiter where were the people who had lunched with us. " They have taken a private sitting-room," replied the man, which was a relief, as I began to be haunted by black fear that Carmona had flitted by night. By and by Pilar's long lashes drooped, and the Cherub, catching her in the act of stifling a yawn, laughingly ordered her off to bed. " You haven't had enough sleep these last few nights to keep a cigarron alive," said he. Soon afterwards his own eyes began to look like those of a sleepy child, and he excused himself with all the ceremony of Spanish leave-takings Dick and I were left alone together, and were dis- cussing what the morrow might bring forth, when a waiter hovered near us, bowing. " The Excelentfsima Seflora Duquesa de Carmona would consider it a favour if Senor Waring and Teniente O'Donnel would visit her in her sitting- room," he announced. Were the heavens about to fall ? My lifted eye- brows and Dick's questioned each other in bewilder- 1 88 THE CAR OF DESTINY ment. But our lips were silent as we followed the servant. The sitting-room of the " Excelentfsima Seftora " was on the first floor, perhaps a big bedroom hastily transformed. What we expected to see as the waiter opened the door I hardly know ; but we assuredly did not expect to see the Duchess sitting alone. The table where the party had dined was covered now by a piece of gaudy, pseudo-Moorish embroidery, and adorned with flowers. A few guide-books and novels -were scattered about, and in her hand the Duchess held a paper-covered volume, as if she had been reading. But the expression of the dark, heavy face contradicted her pose. We could see that she was excited. " Forgive my not rising, as I am tired," she said, as we came in. " It is kind of you to be so prompt, and I thank you." Then she paused, and we waited. " I beg you to sit down. I want the pleasure of a talk." We obeyed. And still waited. " I am a little embarrassed," went on the Duchess. " You must be patient. What I wish to say is difficult. And yet the Sefior Teniente, being himself Spanish, will understand. We are in Spain, the land of formality and rigid etiquette, among people of our class. That an automobile with two young unmarried men in it (and even Colonel O'Donnel is a widower, not old) that such an automobile should be closely following ours which contains a beautiful girl, is calculated to cause gossip. Everywhere we go along this route my son and I have acquaintances, friends ; and already there has been talk, which flies from place to place in THE DUCHESS 1 HAND 189 gossiping letters between women. I am sure you would not like to think that you had caused me this distress on account of my sweet young guest and her mother ? " Never had I been more completely taken aback. She had us at her mercy ; for how is a man to fight against a woman ? " We are motoring in your direction," I said lamely " The chances of the road bring us together." " Ah ! but I ask you, as a woman of my age may ask a favour of young men like you, senores, not to take those chances. If it is as you say and of course I believe that you happen to be motoring on our road, it would be no great hardship to delay and give us a longer start. Remember, it is for the sake of a young girl, and for an old woman's peace of mind. Will you do this kindness, then, for me ? " She had struck me dumb. I did not know how to answer her, and she knew it. Even Dick, with his quick Yankee wit, for once was unready. And, indeed, the Duchess had us at a hateful disadvantage. " We are in something of a hurry, Senora Duquesa," I stammered awkwardly. " Then, rather than cause you loss of time, we will be off very early, and go as far as may be in the day. If we leave at let us say seven o'clock to-morrow, it would not be too inconvenient for you to wait till nine ? That is all I ask ; and to stay the night at Manzanares instead of trying to get on to some other stopping place. If you promise this, you are honourable men, and I know you will keep your word." She had her lesson well, and had evidently rehearsed it with her son, for this lymphatic, weary-eyed woman 190 THE CAR OF DESTINY was not one to know in advance the names of halting places on an automobile tour. It was clever of Carmona to use his mother's plump hand as a cat's-paw to pull his chestnuts from the fire ; but it was not brave, because he must know that we could not let it touch the flames. I thought for a moment in silence. Only boors could in so many words refuse such a request, put with apparent frankness by a woman old enough to be their mother. Yet I must not be trapped into promising anything that could separate me from Monica. To be near her, at her service always, was the one thing of supreme importance ; but to throw aside my sheep's clothing and declare myself a wolf would be to lose her ; for the instant that Carmona was sure of my identity he would denounce me. I would be sent across the frontier while Monica remained with him, unprotected save by her mother, who was his loyal friend. This was sure to happen, even if I did not count the trouble I might cause Colonel O'Donnel if I were arrested while posing as his son. It seemed to me that we must agree to do what the Duchess asked, and, while keeping the letter of our promise, take means to see Monica in Sevilla. There, I must let her know all that had taken place, even if I could not communicate with her before. And I must implore her to come away with me lest some plot had been hatched meanwhile behind my back. "What do you think, Waring?" I said. Then, giving him a cue, " I feel that we must consent, even though we may not see things according to the Duchess' point of view." " Why, of course, a man can't refuse a lady ; a lady THE DUCHESS 1 HAND 191 generally knows that," Dick answered, avenging our wrongs with one sharp dig. She thanked us effusively. " Then I may depend on you ? " she asked, looking at me. " You may depend upon us," I said. " And pray don't trouble to leave at an inconvenient time. My friend and I promise you two hours' start." CHAPTER XXII THE LUCK OF THE DREAM-BOOK IT was late, and Monica must have gone to bed, therefore it was impossible to send her a message. Next morning I was up early, and had my coffee and roll on a little table in the patio, in the hope of snatch- ing a word with her. But she came down as closely attended by her mother and the Duchess as if she had been a queen, and they her ladies-in-waiting. I had only a chance to say good-bye, as they were ready to drive off; and when I would have added a hasty explanation of our delay, the Duchess began to speak, so that Monica was whisked away without hearing. " Wicked old cat \ " was Pilar's exclamation when Dick told her the story of last night's dilemma. But when asked what she would have done in our place, her invention failed ; and the Cherub approved our course. The others had taken full advantage of our gener- osity, and had not left Toledo till nine. Therefore, according to our contract, we were obliged to wait until eleven, surprising Ropes by our procrastination. But as we were on the point of spinning away from the hotel, a goat-herd turned the corner at the head of his shaggy flock. The man, tanned a dark bronze with constant exposure, wore his rags with the air of a 1M THE LUCK OF THE DREAM-BOOK 193 king marching to conquest, and rather than show vulgar curiosity, strode past scarcely deigning a look at the automobile, though it was as likely as not the first he had ever seen. His goats, equally unconcerned, strayed among our wheels without hurry, and when they chose clattered off with much play of little cloven hoofs on cobble-stones. A sharper note of contrast could hardly have been struck, Dick and I said to each other, a meeting between the automobile, latest product of man's restless invention, made to fly across states and continents, and the goat-herd whose knowledge of the world might extend ten miles beyond the place where, since his birth, he had carried on one of the most ancient occupations on the globe. So the ages seemed united, and Virgil and Theocritus brought suddenly face to face with Maeterlinck and Henley ; and an instant later we had taken a small excursion into the middle ages of superstition. Pilar told us gravely that in a volume of Dreams and Love Lore valued beyond all other books by the young girls of Andalucfa, one read that it brought good luck to lovers to meet a flock of goats when starting on a journey in the morning. Thus encouraged to hope for what I dared not expect, we set off, again and again finding ourselves hard put to it to get the long chassis of the Gloria round sharp corners of narrow streets. More than once it could be done only by backing the car, a feat which was witnessed with cries of astonishment by a crowd of watersellers with painted tin vessels, milkmen on donkey back, knife grinders, and Murillo cherubs who were following to see us off. Thus attended we slid down the steep hill which twisted past the old 194 THE CAR OF DESTINY fortifications of Toledo, and brought us out at last upon the Puente de Alcantara, that most wonderful bridge of all the world. The Tagus, grandest river in Spain, and golden as old father Tiber himself, plunged through his narrow gorge a hundred feet below the arch of stone, and on either hand stood up the sun-baked cliffs, Toledo seated on their summit, crowned with towers, like an empress upon her throne. Far beneath, in the swirl of yellow water, were Moorish mills, white with age, grinding corn for their new masters. As we passed across the bridge at a foot-pace between strings of tasselled and jingling mules, little grey donkeys loaded with pigskins of wine, brown jugs of olive oil, or bags of meal, and charming children who offered us roses for a perrilla, we had our last sight of the cathedral spires. The voice of a young girl, washing white and blue clothing in a trough of running water, sped us upon our journey. Her head was bound in a scarlet handkerchief; and smiling at us while she pounded the linen, she sang a strange song, half chant, with that wild Eastern lilt which has been handed down from the Moors to the sons and daughters of Spain. " She's improvising a copla \ " exclaimed Filar. " Listen ; it's for you, brother Crist6bal." So I listened, and heard that my eyes though dark as starless skies, could blaze as the sun with love, and that the blessing of a poor girl who had none to care for her, was upon the rich girl who held the treasure of my heart. " You must blow her a kiss to pay for the song," Pilar said. " Don't you know that ? But then, you THE LUCK OF THE DREAM-BOOK 195 haven't been in Spain long except in your thoughts. That's expected ; just as a girl must politely kiss her hand to a bullfighter if he kisses his to her ; for if she doesn't, she puts the evil-eye upon him ; and like as not he's gored the next time he goes into the arena. Oh, I love the coplas \ And wasn't that woman sing- ing in good Spanish ? Even the common people speak well here, for Valladolid and Toledo Spanish is the best in Spain." I looked back and kissed my hand to the girl, who would have been insulted had I thrown money ; and lifting my eyes once more to the towering city, I saw a mediaeval background such as old masters love to give their pictures. The landscape was wild, and unchanged to all appearance from the days when the Crescent and the Cross battled for supremacy on those stony hills and in those savage gorges. Once again, I felt myself a crude anachronism, in my automobile ; nor did the impression leave me when Toledo was hidden round a corner; nor when we flashed past ancient Eastern norias, slowly turned by sleepy horses or indignant donkeys ; nor with glimpses of sentinel watch-towers, or ruined castles such " castles in Spain " as Don Pedro promised to the Black Prince's soldiers and seldom gave if they were worth giving. Now, our business was to hark back to the king's highway between Madrid and Sevilla that road on which Dick thriftily planned his quick service of auto- mobiles for passengers and market gardeners ; but to- day there was none of that excitement of the chase to which we were accustomed. I was depressed despite the good omen of the goats, and an encounter with a 196 THE CAR OF DESTINY mule who had four white feet a sign of some extra- ordinary piece of luck, according to Pilar's Dream-Book. The gently undulating, olive-silvered country with its occasional far-off hamlets and fine church spires did not interest me, and I was not as thankful as I should have been for the good road. At last we had left the zone of brown cities and sombre-hued villages, and come into the zone of dazzling white habitations, which meant that we were nearing the southern land, loved by the sun. The huge, semi-fortified, high-walled farmhouses standing in lonely spaces were white as great shells floating solitary on seas of waving green. The close-grouped knots of cottages huddled together for mutual protection might have been cut from blocks of marble ; and their tenants were vivid creatures, burning like tropical flowers against the dazzling white of their rough walls. Never for ten minutes was the landscape the same. From olive plantations we rushed into a bleak country of savage hills, where windmills planted upon rocks beckoned with slowly moving arms ; so down into flowery valleys with a thread of silver river tangled in the grasses near a long white road. And always the horizon was broken with tumbled mountains, purple, gold, and rose, swimming in a sea of light and changing colour. " Soon we'll be in Cervantes' country," said the Cherub ; " and good country it is for sport. I come myself sometimes with friends, after wild boar ; and there are plenty of rabbits to be had when there's nothing better." " Don't speak of rabbits," said Dick. " It makes me hungry to think of them ; and as nobody has said THE LUCK OF THE DREAM-BOOK 197 anything about lunching, and we're having such a good run, I haven't liked to mention it. Still, there's that Andaluz ham and goodness knows how many other things wasting their sweetness " The Cherub shook his head. " We mustn't stop here. It will be better to wait till we come to another roadmender's house. We're sure to pass one before tong. Then we'll pull up, and the women will bring us water, or anything we want." " I believe what you're really thinking of, is brigands!" exclaimed Filar. " Well," smiled the Cherub, " maybe something of the sort was in my mind ; though you need have no fear, my Pilarcita." " As if I would a soldier's daughter ! " sneered Pilarcita. " I wish we would meet the Seven Men of Ecija, or El Vivillo himself if they haven't caught him yet. It would be fun." " No fun with you among us, child," the Cherub said. " The chivalrous bandoleros of the past exist in these days only in story books and ballads. Vivillo is a villainous brute, and a little farther south we'll find no one on the road who'll care to speak his name. They'll call him Sefior Coso. As for the Seven Men of Ecija, one says that they're disbanded long ago ; yet there's a rumour that they still exist ; and by the way, Don Ramon, for generations that famous band of seven brigands has had a connection at least in old wives' gossip with the Dukes of Carmona." " How's that ? " I inquired, interested ; for though I had heard many things about that house, I had not heard the story at which Colonel O'Donnel hinted. " I wonder you don't know ! " said he. " Why, the 198 THE CAR OF DESTINY tale runs that, more than a hundred years ago, the baby heir of the Carmonas was ailing. If they lost him, the title would go to another branch of the family; but the Duchess had died within a few days of his birth, and no foster-mother could be found to give the child health. Then the Duke caused it to be known far and near that, if any woman could save his boy, she should have a pension for life, enough to keep her in comfort with all her family ; and that her daughter and her daughter's daughter should, if she chose to make the contract, be foster-mothers of future Dukes of Carmona. In answer to this proclamation came a woman of Ecija, the town of the brigands ; a Juno of a creature. She nursed the ailing heir back to health, and when the child had become devoted to her, the secret leaked out that she was the married sister of the terrible priest who led the brigand band. But she was not sent away for that reason. Instead, the Duke used his influence successfully to obtain a pardon for her husband, the priest's brother- in-law, when he was taken red-handed for robbery and murder between Carmona and Sevilla ; and in gratitude for this the man promised that his sons and sons' sons should be always at the disposal of the ducal house. For the rest, the story goes that more than once in the last century this promise has been exacted and fulfilled in secret." " I wouldn't put it past the present Carmona to have a nest of bandits up his sleeve," said Dick. " It's a pretty black sleeve, if some of the things one hears are true. But here's a roadmender's cottage. What about halting, and cocking snooks at El Vivillo ? " " It will do very well," replied the Cherub. " If worst THE LUCK OF THE DREAM-BOOK 199 came to worst, we could make a good defence from inside." " Honestly, aren't you pulling our legs about the brigands ? " asked Dick, half-scornful and half-amused, as we slowed down. " No," said the Cherub. " I'm not joking, if that's what you mean ; for we are on the borders of the bandido country now. It will be years before brigand- age is stamped out in Spain ; and you must have read of the trouble there's been lately. Not that I think there's much chance of an encounter, but it's well to be prepared ; for if a band of men jump at you with carbines to their shoulders, there's no getting out revolvers." " H'm ! " muttered Dick. " I suppose you know what you're talking about ; but I wouldn't mind betting that these people would laugh if we asked, ' What about brigands?" " All right ; let us ask," said the Cherub calmly. By this time the car had stopped close to a tiny white box of a house set a few yards back from the road, with a strip of grass for a lawn ; and an old man, evidently an ex-soldier, with a plump wife and a pretty daughter were coming out. We interchanged various compliments ; said that, with the kind per- mission of his honour, the roadmender, we would lunch near his house ; were told that the house and every one as well as everything in it was at our worship's disposal ; and finally the Cherub murmured a question as to whether any bandidos had been seen lately. This way and that the old man glanced before answering. Then below his breath replied that, as it happened, four gentlemen of the profession had 200 THE CAR OF DESTINY passed no more than three or four hours ago. They were out of luck, for they had been hunted by the Civil Guard ; and as they were hungry had gone over to the right, there, to see what could be got at the nearest farm. As for his place, it was safe enough, for there was nothing in it which even a brigand would have; and one had to be agreeable to these persons, if they stopped to rest or chat ; it was more prudent. " You see, you would have lost your money if I'd taken your bet, Sefior Waring," said the Cherub. Never was such a lunch as that we had by the road- side. We all worked at spreading out the contents of the hampers, while the roadmender and his family bustled about, not as inferiors with the hope of a tip, but helping us as friends and hosts. When we arrived, not a soul was to be seen, save the dwellers in the white box. The only living things beside the trio and ourselves, were the larks that sprang heavenward pouring jewels from throbbing throats, and a few unknown birds of brilliant red and yellow, like drifting flower-petals. But whether these birds carried the news, or whether it blew over the country with the scented wind, certain it is that an audience collected to gaze upon us, as clouds boil up over a clear horizon. It was not an intrusive crowd that came ; neither did they approach offensively near, or stare with vulgar curiosity. Its component members three or four handsome young mule-drivers, princely in shabbiness ; an elderly tiller of the soil, with the eyes and profile of a half-tamed hawk ; an old woman and a young girl, madonna-like in their hooded cloaks, as they sat their patient donkeys ; and a couple of shy children with the eyes of startled deer hovered, paused, and ruminated, THE LUCK OF THE DREAM-BOOK 201 ready to take flight, like wild creatures of the forest, at a rude look or chaffing word. But they got no rude looks or chaffing words from us, though we dared not smile too invitingly, lest they misunderstand, and flee from us, offended. We bowed gravely; they gravely bowed in return. Then, follow- ing a hurried whisper of advice from the tactful Cherub, we continued our meal. But presently, sandwich in hand, he strolled towards the scattered group, mingled with it, and murmured. What he murmured, we in the car and round it could not hear ; but the chill uncer- tainty on those dark faces brightened into sympathetic amusement. " He's telling them about ourselves and the auto- mobile," chuckled Pilarcita. " Oh, I know him ! He's probably making up nonsense about the car and its workings. In another minute they'll be his slaves, and friends of us all." As she whispered, the plump figure sauntered back. " I think that now it's safe to offer them a share of our food," said he, in the manner of one who imparts a delicious secret. " They are dying for some ; but they'll refuse unless we go about it in the right way, for they're as proud as we are." Pilar was not allowed to move, because, in Spain, women are to be worshipped from afar, and must not mingle with strangers. But she handed plates of the dainties supplied by Dofia Rosita, to Dick and me, and thus laden we wandered towards our audience. " Offer something first to the roadmender's family," suggested the Cherub, and we obeyed. " Probably you are not hungry," was his preface. " Why should you be, when you have plenty of food as good as ours, 202 THE CAR OF DESTINY maybe better? IJut here are things from Madrid. It may happen they are new to you. We shall be pleased if you taste them." Then proud, hesitating fingers hesitated no longer, but descended upon thin slices of ham, shredded and sweetened eggs, cheese, and mazapan. Nobody be- trayed eagerness, but faces beamed, especially when the roadmender, proud of us as if we had been his relations, went round with our wineskin, cordially bidding every man put it to his lips. As the company ate and drank, the Cherub circulated among them, and soon was primed with the abbreviated life-story of each person, though he had apparently asked no questions. Somehow, it was the first impulse of the most reserved soul to confide in the Cherub ; and when the meal was finished, and no excuse remained for lingering, the wild birds, tamed by kindness, flew away regretfully. " They'll all have good words to speak for auto- mobilists after this," said Pilar. " Until some ruffian comes tearing along, upset- ting their carts and breaking their illusions," added Dick. When we were ready to go on, the roadmender's wife would not be content unless Pilar would have a look at the house, which she took, and came back delighted. " Tiny rooms, but clean as wax," she re- ported. " Pictures and crucifixes and Toledo knives on the snow-white walls, and beautiful bright copper in the kitchen. I believe I could be happy to live there with someone I loved." Was the image of Don Cipriano in her mind as she said this? or Dick's tanned face and whimsical grey THE LUCK OF THE DREAM-BOOK 203 eyes ? Or did she think only of an existence in the society of her father ? " Beware gutters ! " was the roadmender's last word as we spun away ; and we were glad of the warning ; for despite careful driving, a few seconds of inatten- tion might have sent us crashing into and over a deep trough across the road, half hidden by thick dust There were many of these gutters, which might have been put underneath in the form of culverts ; but, as the Cherub remarked, since nobody takes the trouble to complain, in Spain, why should anyone bother ? There were broken patches, too, where somebody had begun to build a bridge, and then apparently for- gotten all about going on with it ; but luckily there were side tracks made by other pioneers, by which, with care, one could skirt the great square hole, and land safely on the other side. Thus we arrived before a walled town with a Moorish gateway ; and, for all the changes which had come or gone since the days of those who set it up, the place might have been under a spell of enchantment, a kind of " sleeping sickness," for at least five hundred un- noticeable years. Our maps said that it was Ciudad Real ; Colonel O'Donnel added that of all garrison towns it was the one which young officers hated worst. And while the car paused with panting motor for a discussion as to the way on, two dark youths by the roadside interested themselves in our situation. They had red handker- chiefs twisted round their heads, and the smarter of the pair wore two sombreros, one over the other a simple way of carrying his Sunday hat on week-days; and 204 THE CAR OF DESTINY they looked up from a meal of maize bread and onions to enter into conversation. Had our honours any doubt as to the road? If so, and our worships would deign to mention the destination desired, they might have the happiness of helping us. We wanted to go to Manzanares, I replied. In that case, replied the owner of the two sombreros, there was a short cut which would be of assistance. Not only would it save us a bad section of road, but an hour's time as well. We must not go through the town, but turn to the left round the wall, nor must we enter the village which we would soon see, but skirt that also. Presently we would come to fields planted with olives, and our way would lead through these. We must not be disheartened if it appeared wild and rough. We should be able to pass, and in the end would be glad that we had availed ourselves of such advice. Taking this for granted, I gave each of the lads a peseta, which they accepted more as their just due than as a favour. To avoid the town, it seemed that we must steer into chaos, void and formless ; but there were only a few hundred yards of desert. Beyond, we found ourselves in a good road, which led to the white village we had been told to expect ; and there, as we were already primed with information, we wasted no time in asking questions. Instead, we plunged into open country, with a vista of olive trees in the grey-green distance. From fair, the road dwindled to doubtful ; then to a certainty of badness. It narrowed ; softened to a sandbank; hardened into a wilderness of rocks and stones scattered between deep ruts dug by the THE LUCK OF THE DREAM-BOOK 205 wheels of ox-carts. Apparently no other vehicles than these had ever weathered the terrors of this passage ; yet we persevered ; for here were the promised olive trees, so near, indeed, that we lurched against them as we rocked from side to side. We had been warned whatever happened not to be discouraged, and we cheered each other bravely, while our heads bumped against the roof. " We shall be out of this presently," we gasped. " It will surely be all right soon." Meanwhile, however, it was a nightmare ; the sort of thing which a delirious chauffeur might dream and rave of, in a fever ; and instead of improving, the way grew worse. " Can it be possible those chaps deceived us on pur- pose ? " I jerked out between chattering teeth, as the car sprang from one three-foot rut into another, in spite of Ropes' coaxing. " I'll bet it's a trick of Carmona's," gasped Dick, at the risk of biting his tongue. " I thought that fellow in the two hats looked a fox." " I did see them laughing when I looked round after we passed," said Pilar, as jumpily as if she rode a trotting horse. " But I thought they were pleased with the pesetas." " I expect they'd got more than we gave, to send us the wrong way," growled Dick. " We must have been dreaming not to think of it." " We can't go about suspecting everyone we meet to be in Carmona's pay," said I. " We'd be mistaken as often as right, and then we should feel small. After all, there isn't much harm done." " It's a wonder we haven't smashed something, sir," sighed the much-enduring Ropes. 206 THE CAR OF DESTINY " That's what Carmona prayed to his demons we would do," said Dick. " I'll back San Crist6bal against them all," said I. " Besides, there was the mule with the four white feet, and the goat-herd," Filar reminded me. " I can't say they've brought us luck." " Wait," said Pilar. " Meanwhile let's turn back," said Dick. " Another hundred yards like this, and even if we don't smash the differential or the chassis, Ropes will get side-slip of the brain. Half an hour of such driving must be equal to a week in purgatory for a chauffeur." We did turn back, and feeling years older, arrived once more at the point from which we had started. We would have given something to see the man with the two hats, and his companion, but they had prudently taken themselves off, like full-fed vultures. This time we made no inquiries, but trusted to our intuition and our maps, which, without once contradict- ing each other, led us into a decent road, that seemed like a path to paradise after all we had endured. Making up for lost time, and revelling in joy of motion, we put on our best speed, which for a few moments brought the roadside telegraph posts as close together as fir trees in a Norwegian forest. But suddenly the motor slowed, and stopped with a tired sigh within sight of a village white as newly polished silver. " Petrol gone," said Ropes. " It oughtn't to be, but it is. Extra strain in that short cut of the Duke's, used it up." He got out, and untied a bidon from the reserve store fastened upon the foot-board. But the tin was THE LUCK OF THE DREAM-BOOK 207 light in his hand as a feather. He gave a low whistle, and a shadow darkened his face, a shadow which was not made by the brim of his motor cap as he bent his head to examine the bidon. " There's a leak here, sir," he said to me for though Dick was now supposed to be his master, in moments of stress he clung to old habits. " Looks as if the tin had been pricked with some sharp instrument. H'm ! Shouldn't wonder if it had been. It would be of a piece with all the rest." " You mean at Toledo ? " "Yes, sir. Everything was right, then. I bought enough petrol in Madrid to last to Cordova, pretty well all we could carry, and ordered more to meet us there, grande vitesse, in case I couldn't get it as you said we were sure now to go that way." " Well, let's look at your other bidons. We shall be in a fix if we're held up here." " Two more empty," announced Ropes. " And three bidons don't suddenly take to leaking, of themselves. I suppose if I'd had my wits about me, I'd have looked, at Toledo, before starting ; but who's to think of every- thing? I did have a thorough go at the car, for fear of mischief, but forgot the bidons. However, there's one to go on with, I'm pretty sure; for it's stowed away in a place nobody would think of, if they had to do the villain act in a hurry." Whereupon he handed out a new bidon from the tool box, and we both gave a sigh of relief to see that it was intact. At least, we had now enough to get us to Manzanares ; and at worst we could but be hung up there while Ropes went back by train as far as Madrid to buy petrol. 208 THE CAR OF DESTINY While we had been making these discoveries, how- ever, the village had been discovering us. It was not the time cf year, as Filar said, for bears and monkeys to arrive by road, therefore when something was seen approaching rapidly and stopping suddenly, the inhabit- ants of the white town had not been able to bear the suspense. Somebody had given the word that there was a thing to see, and out Torralba came pouring in its hundreds, a brilliant procession a full quarter of a mile long. Youth and beauty took the lead. Girls with arms thrown round the shoulders of one another's blue, pink, or yellow jackets, skipped along the dazzling road like peasant graces. Little, star-eyed brown boys had apparently taken the trouble to step off Murillo's canvases to find out what we were, while their toddling sisters cried at being outdistanced. Behind these came men, middle-aged and old, in strange- shaped caps like fur and leather coal-scuttles, women with bare black heads, or faded blue handkerchiefs shadowing withered faces, and beggars hobbling on their sticks ; a shouting, laughing army pouring its bright coloured stream down the white line of the straight road. And before the Gloria had been re- freshed with her long drink of petrol, the wave of life had broken round her bonnet Bright eyes stared, brown hands all but touched us ; and children knew not whether to shriek with fright or laugh with joy as they saw themselves reflected in the glass turned up against our roof. But at the first cough of the motor as it throbbed into waking, the throng rolled back, dividing to let us pass, as if the car had cloven it in two, and joining again to tear home in our wake. THE LUCK OF THE DREAM-BOOK 209 All the able-bodied women who had not come out to meet us were sitting before the doors of their white houses, making lace mantillas and flounces for the young Queen elect, Torralba is famous for its lace- makers, and they waved work-worn hands as we ran by, wishing us good speed, or throwing an improvised copla after the vanishing Gloria. Now we were in Don Quixote-land ; and had we gone back to his day as we entered his country of La Mancha, our red car could have roused little more excitement. Village after village turned out for us ; always the same gorgeous colours against the back- ground of white houses and blue arch of sky ; always the same brilliant eyes and rich brown faces with scarlet lips that laughed. It was even a relief to the monotony to meet a band of fierce-eyed young carters ranged in a line with big stones in their hands, wanting to bash in the aristocrats' features, if the aristocrats frightened their mules. But neither the aristocrats nor mules showed fear. Pilar even leaned out, as if daring the four or five sullen fellows to throw their stones into a girl's face, and their arms fell inoffensively. " I don't believe any Spaniard, no matter how bad, would hurt a woman whfr had done him no harm ! " she exclaimed. The road, with its rutty, irritating surface, seemed endless. We had started late, according to our promise, and having lost more than an hour on the " short cut," grey wings of twilight began at last to fold in the landscape. It was long since we had passed a village ; Manzanares was not yet near, and I began to wonder whether the Gloria would not again grow thirsty before we could give her drink. 210 THE CAR OF DESTINY Turn after turn ; always the same jolting ; always the same scene, till our minds wearied. Then, suddenly rounding a bend, we came upon something which made every one of us forget boredom. There was the Duke's car the grey car which we had sworn to avoid stuck in a caniveau that cut the road in two. There were Carmona and his chauffeur staring balefully into the inner workings of the motor ; there were the Duchess and Lady Vale-Avon, dust- powdered and disconsolate, sitting forlornly on roadside hillocks ; and there was Monica, her veil off, walking up and down impatiently with her little hands buried in the pockets of her grey coat, the last gleam of sunset finding a responsive note in the gold of her hair. " What did I tell you ! " exclaimed Filar. " The goat-herd ! The mule with the white feet ! It's the luck of the Dream-Book 1" CHAPTER XXIII THE GLORIFICATION OF MONICA SLOWING up, we were almost upon the group; and for once we were welcome to our enemies. Even Carmona's face brightened, a flicker of hope lit Lady Vale-Avon's grey eyes ; and the Duchess deli- berately courted us with a smile. As for Monica, she was radiant as a child who has been surprised by the home-coming of loved ones ; yet there was a new wistfulness in her eyes, despite the joy she showed. " Oh, how glorious that you've come to the rescue ! " she cried, all dimples and roses. Still, she looked from me to Pilar, and from Filar to me, as if she longed to ask one or the other some question which it was impossible to speak ; and I said to myself that it would go hard with me if I did not find out before I was many hours older, what that question was. Any port is welcome in a storm or among fellow- motorists, if you are helpless by the roadside with several ladies when night is coming on ; and Carmona's first words showed that he had no scruple in making use of us. But with the trials he had gone through, and his natural preference for the help of any other car rather than the hated Gloria, he was in a black mood. He wished to be civil, lest we should be 211 212 THE CAR OF DESTINY goaded into leaving him in the lurch ; yet it was plainly such an effort that I could have laughed aloud. Filar would have been able to quote paragraph and page of her Dream-Book. The worst damage to the car was a broken spring, though something seemed to have gone wrong also with the ignition in that disastrous bump into the caniveau. They had been where we found them for a couple of hours, Carmona admitted, without encounter- ing any vehicle or animal to give them a tow. The first hope had been to stagger on to Man zan ares (which originally they had meant to pass) with a broken spring; but the bee in the motor's bonnet could not be made to buzz, and in despair Carmona had been about to send his chauffeur on foot, in search of some conveyance for the ladies and their luggage. More hours must have passed, at best, before the man could have returned to the rescue, and already everybody was hungry. The ladies of the Duke's party had to be transferred to the Gloria ; and Dick, with airs of ownership, urged vague and voluble reasons why I should be their companion in the tonneau. We were the masters of the situation, and Carmona's face, as he was obliged to take his seat beside the chauffeur who must steer the car in tow, repaid me for grievous wrongs. Pilar, not to be outdone in ingenuity by Dick, did for me what I could not do for myself, in contriving that I should sit next to Monica. Though I could say nothing for her ears which other ears might not hear, it was a joy to feel her slight shoulder nestling warm against my arm, to know that she could not be snatched from me by her mother or Carmona, but THE GLORIFICATION OF MONICA 213 that as it was now, so it must be for many moments, perhaps an hour, to come. There was also satisfaction to be got from the fact that my enemy, bumping on behind in his own disabled oar (propelled by our generosity and power), was glaring with malice, envy, and all uncharitableness at my back. My one regret in these moments which should have been perfect, was that my prophetic soul hadn't caused me to write a long letter to Monica, which I might have been able to slip into her hand under cover of rugs and darkness. Ropes had to light the lamps before we saw more of Manzanares than an illusive church spire which kept appearing and disappearing like a will-o'-the-wisp. But the petrol held out, and the Gloria's breathing was regular, despite the weight she had to tow over ruts and across gutters. Once, however, Ropes looked back at me with an expressive movement of the shoulders which I interpreted as, " we're lucky if we get there ! " so I could have shouted "hurrah!" at sight of the first houses, though they brought my last moment of happiness. Another instant, and the population of Manzanares was answering to the thrum of our motor, as soldiers to the call of the drum. From somewhere, their saints alone knew where, an army of children poured into the long straight street, and as we slowed to avoid whole- sale murder, they took advantage of our consideration to swarm up the car like ants. They ran shouting beside us, climbed on to the steps, hung on behind, fighting so ruthlessly for choice positions that they all but fell under the wheels. One would not have supposed there could be other children left in Spain. How there could be room for these in the town of 214 THE CAR OF DESTINY Manzanares was a wonder ; how they could all have turned out on the second in their thousands, was a miracle ; and their promptness would have done credit to any commander. The shrill cries of this legion, drowning the sound of the motor, and increasing as the contingent was swelled from each side street, roused the town. Families left their tables and rushed to the door, their supper in their hands. Bakers with white arms left to-morrow's bread in the troughs ; a group of farriers shoeing a horse stopped work, until the glowing iron paled. Shopkeepers who had lighted their windows with a blaze of electricity, ran into the street. Mules and donkeys tied to doorposts shared the general excite- ment, plunged and reared before the advance of the human breaker with the car on its crest, snapped their cords, and dashed into their masters' houses. Never, among all our successes, had we made such a succ/s fou as this ; but then, never before had we had a car in tow. Half our triumph belonged to the Lecomte ; yet either of us would gladly have dispensed with all ; and had it not been for a small but deter- mined policeman who struggled to preserve the credit of the town, we might have been half the night fighting our way to an hotel. He dealt blows and exhortations indiscriminately, piloted us through side streets which it would never have occurred to our imagination to enter, and with exertions worthy of him who " singly kept the bridge," helped us make a lane for the ladies to dart into the door of the little fonda. It was an iron door of elaborate openwork, leading, Moorish fashion, through a shallow vestibule into a THE GLORIFICATION OF MONICA 215 patio the first we had seen on our way south ; and it it had not been slammed shut with a loud click, by some person inside, half Manzanares would have poured after the fugitives. Assured of the ladies' safety, the men of the two (outwardly) united parties remained to help the chauffeurs and a bewildered landlord to take down luggage. Overwhelmed by a wave of half-grown chil- dren and a thick spray of babies, Carmona's man lost his presence of mind. The two cars had hardly stopped before the creatures were in them, and on them, and under them, trying to pinch the tyres, blowing the horn, squalling, laughing, crying. " Mon Dieu, c'est un obsession!" wailed the unfortunate Frenchman; and even the imperturbable Ropes showed signs of " nerves." As fast as the thronging goblins were beaten off, they were up again in redoubled force ; but so merry they were, and so handsome was each bold brown face, with its dazzling eyes, that it was impossible to be angry. Somehow, we rescued the luggage, and with the aid of the landlord pitched, or slid, or rolled it through the door, momentarily opened. " For Heaven's sake, sir, see me through this ! " implored Ropes, noticing that the men of the party were on the point of following the luggage. " Hate to trouble you, but I don't think my Spanish will run to it." In pity I climbed into the car to go with him to the stable which the landlord indicated as our garage. It was an experience to be remembered in nightmares ; yet there was in it a sort of schoolboy pleasure. We seemed to have done battle against the whole force of the army out against us ; nevertheless 216 THE CAR OF DESTINY when we returned to thefonda, swept along by a large bodyguard, we found a regiment assembled round the door. How we got through was food for another wild dream, but we did get through, to stand panting on the other side of the grating, in the patio. Dozens of dark faces were pressed against the bars, like tier above tier of glowing pansies in a flower- bed ; and we knew at last the sensation of those who are the observed, not the observers, in a menagerie. Everyone was in the patio, where electric lights hanging from the balconies mingled with rich yellow lamplight and ruddy firelight streaming from the kitchen. All the luggage was piled anyhow, in a chaotic heap surging with suit-cases, boiling with dressing-bags ; while near by, like Marius and a friend or two at the ruins of Carthage, stood the Duchess, Lady Vale-Avon, Carmona, Dick, and the Cherub. Monica and Pilar had been talking together at a dis- tance ; but seeing me gravitate in their direction, Lady Vale- Avon called her daughter. " The ladies are saying they can't stay here," announced Dick, his voice in sympathy with a twinkle in his eyes. " I'm not saying so," cut in Monica. " I think it will be fun ; a real adventure. The landlady's won- derful, and all her daughters and nieces beauties. If we're nice to them, they'll be adorable to us." " The place is a den ! " exclaimed Lady Vale- Avon. " There must be something better in the town." "I'm afraid there isn't," said the Duke. "This accident has made me helpless. I'm horribly sorry ; but we can't get on anywhere else to-night." THE GLORIFICATION OF MONICA 217 " We can sit up," said the Duchess, " in the auto- mobile." " Do let's look at the rooms," begged Monica. "And don't let them see we're finding fault. Their feelings will be hurt." " What nonsense ! " replied Lady Vale- Avon. " As if they had feelings ! " " If you don't consider them, they won't take pains to make you comfortable," I said, knowing by instinct the people with whom we had to deal. " They're beginning to suspect already that something's wrong, and judging from the expression of their faces it will take only a little more for the landlord to say he has no rooms. Then we really may have to sit in the automobiles." The keeper of the fonda and his family, who had come so warmly to welcome the strangers, were now hovering aloof, silent and suspicious, their spirits dashed by the contemptuous looks of Lady Vale-Avon and the Duchess. Standing in semi-darkness, the landlord's face was a blur of brown shadow, featureless, save for a pair of enormous eyes burning with an emotion which was no longer hospitality. His wife, whose broad shoulder was pressed against her husband's as if to form a line of defence, was a dark-browed, gipsy-like woman, who must once have been beautiful, and might now be formidable. Behind them were grouped a handsome boy, and three or four extra- ordinarily pretty girls with red and white roses in their hair. " They wouldn't dare turn us out ! " exclaimed Lady Vale- Avon. " They can never have had persons of our sort before." 2i8 THE CAR OF DESTINY "If you asked, they'd probably retort that Dukes and Marquesses were thick as blackberries," said I. She glanced at Carmona, hoping for support, but he shrugged his shoulders in despair ; and a look from me was a signal for the Cherub to step forward. The atmosphere had begun to tingle, and in a few moments more it might have been too late to make peace with these proud and self-respecting people, who had never submitted to indignity. But in the space of six seconds the magnetism of the Cherub had begun to do its work. He murmured, nodded, and smiled, took the family into his confidence with a few graphic gestures, explained that the ladies were upset by an accident, appealed to the landlord's chivalry, and the landlady's heart Gathering frowns were chased away by smiles ; and when Monica showed her dimples to the boy and girls with a look which pleaded for kind- ness, the battle was fought and won. They had not many bedrooms. Several were engaged by commercial travellers, but these gentle- men should be stowed into one room, their clothing and luggage moved at once. Oh, they would not object when they learned that it was a question of accommodating ladies ; or if they did, they must eat their objections for supper; it was no matter. And the landlord and landlady would give up their room, a good one, their worships need have no fear. All should be ready in the opening and closing of an eye. But would we meanwhile have supper? There was always enough for a few unexpected ones. Having listened so far, the Cherub turned blandly to Carmona. These arrangements need not include the Sefior Duque's party, unless he liked, of course, THE GLORIFICATION OF MONICA 219 but his palms were extended as if to receive the decision. Plump it fell into them. Everyone must stay, and make the best of it So the ladies were bundled into a room where they might get rid of the dust, and the men into another; clean rooms, with white-washed walls, bare save for a pictured saint or two in lurid colours ; floors covered with coarse, bright matting ; and iron beds with lace- frilled and embroidered pillows. In a quarter of an hour everyone was ready for dinner, but five out of fifteen minutes I had given to the hasty scribbling of a pencilled note for Monica. I hoped to slip it into her hand in the dining-room, but she was closely under guard ; and Carmona annexed four seats at the head of the long table, by which manoeuvre he secured isolation for his party. It was safe from any sortie of ours, as there was a scattered contingent of commercial travellers already earnestly engaged in dining on either side of the table. Two polite men on the left, and three on the right, all with napkins tucked under their chins, rose, offering to move rather than divide friends ; but Carmona assured them that the sacrifice was unnecessary. As they were all paralysed by Monica's beauty, of a type so different from any to which they were accustomed, they had not the self-command to protest ; and as dinner went on (in many courses of which the landlord was evidently proud), they could scarcely do justice to their merluza served with grilled lemon and minced red Spanish pepper ; their tortilla of eggs, potatoes, peas, and ham, their pigeons with olives, or even their freshly baked macaroni, for gazing languorously at the vision of pink and white and gold. 220 THE CAR OF DESTINY Such charms as Pilar's, though unsurpassable of their kind, went for nothing with these ardent gentlemen ; and even the landlord's son, daughters, and nieces who waited upon their guests, forgot half their duties in abject admiration. "An angel!" "a saint!" "a princess of fairyland ! " were a few of their whispered adjectives ; and when the object of their worship was snatched away by her mother and the Duchess, before the goats' milk cheese had been brought round, a gloom fell upon the room. The commercial travellers galloped through the remainder of the meal, and went out, hoping perhaps, if they promenaded the street, to have the joy of seeing a light in the radiant being's window. The pretty girls of the household vanished with murmured excuses, leaving us at the mercy of the boy, who sighed grievously, dropped a sugar bowl, and spilled coffee within an ace of the Cherub's shoulder. Filar presently disappeared also, leaving her three men alone at the table, observed only by a few dozen eager faces pressed against the iron bars protecting the open window. Soon we heard peals of laughter from the patio ; the pretty girls were sallying forth on a foraging expedition in search of a warming-pan to heat the beds of the three great ladies, who feared dampness. In twenty minutes they came back, and we arrived in the patio in time to see the triumphal entrance of four or five charming creatures, bearing among them a long-handled brass vessel which had probably existed since the days of Philip the Second. But this was only the beginning of the fun ; and we made an excuse of our cigarettes to linger, and hear what we could not see. It was not a beautiful patio ; and the public still THE GLORIFICATION OF MONICA 221 surged outside the iron-grated door in the hope of further insight into the private lives of the travelling menagerie ; but our luggage had been carried to the rooms which were now ready (thanks to the com- plaisance of the dazzled commercial gentlemen), and there were garden seats, on which we settled ourselves in spite of the chill in the evening air. From the rooms above we heard laughter and ecstatic cries. Evidently the warming-pan was making a sen- sation as it went its round, or something else had happened ; and when at last the girls trooped down- stairs from the balcony, I beckoned them to come our way. They skipped to us, wild with delight at the prospect of pouring out their hearts to an appreciative audience. The great warming-pan, stuffed with embers that glowed and paled, was laid on the tiled pavement while the girls wove themselves into a group, with interlacing arms. " Why are you so happy ? " I asked. " Happy ? We have been in paradise, with the angels," replied the prettiest girl with crimson roses stuck in a bank of copper hair. " There was but one angel," objected her brunette cousin. " That is true. The two old ones think themselves everything, but they are less than nothing. I would not change my years for theirs, with their jewels and their quarterings. Thanks be to God, in our Spain, we are all as noble as the nobles, or at least in this province ! " " You are also all beautiful ! " said I. " That you can say so, senor, after seeing that 222 THE CAR OF DESTINY wonder ! " exclaimed the landlord's eldest daughter, a creature of carnation and flame. " Ah, the joy of it, we have been undressing her ! " "If you could have seen her, with gold hair down to her knees ! " gasped a gipsy of fifteen. " And when we had got her dress off, and she was in her " " Hush, Micaela ! it is not seemly that you should mention such garments in the presence of sefiores ! " broke in the girl of the copper coronet. " But why, then, since they are most beautiful ? You know well, Mariquita, you yourself said they were like the handwork of fairies, and her shoulders " " Be silent, foolish one, or I shall have to burn your nose off with the warming-pan ! " " And what did the elder ladies say to the young lady's new maids ? " I asked quickly, as great eyes began to flash, and scarlet lips to pout. Back came the smiles, and the maidens fell into a fit of schoolgirl giggling. " There was but one Majesty there, praise be to the saints, the English one, who is no doubt the mother of our lady angel. They have two rooms between them, but that of the sefiorita is tiny, with no door of its own, and only a square glazed hole for a window, though the bed is as good as any, and we have given it the best linen. When we took in the warming-pan our angel tried to say in Spanish that she was sure our beds were dry and well aired, as indeed they were. She had taken off her bodice, and was undoing her hair, which was so beautiful we could have fallen down and prayed to her as a saint. Then we could not resist but began helping her to undress, talking about her beauty. She was not offended, though we kissed her THE GLORIFICATION OF MONICA 223 hands, and that silly Micaela one of her tiny white feet when we had pulled off the stocking " " Now you are as bad as I was, Mariquita." " No, indeed ; what is a stocking ? A thing it is as well to go without as to wear. That is different. The angel laughed till she was close to tears, and said we were far nicer maids than the one her mother had sent on by railway train in starting by automobile. After this, she would be spoiled for others ; and she gave us each one a present. Lola, two wondrous hat-pins with blue stones in silver not that she would ever suffer the tortures of a hat, but it is a great thing to have them. Teresa, a sweet round purse of blue leather, of the size to hold a five peseta piece ; Micaela, a hand- kerchief with lace on the edge, and me an embroidered veil like a gossamer. What did we care that Her Majesty the mother would have sent us away if she could ? She had not enough Spanish to make us understand what we did not wish to understand, and at last she saved her breath for another day. But by that time we had finished, for we had put our angel into her nightdress, a thing of cobwebs and lace kept together by blue ribbons, which I should have thought good enough for a queen to wear when mounting her throne." " You must show us your presents," said I, with deliberate cunning. All were displayed on the instant, with chattering, laughing, and clamorous claims for rival merits. But the veil was the thing which I looked on to covet. She had worn it one day after rain, when the roads had been clear of dust, and her face had gleamed through the lace as a star gleams through a floating cloud-film. I felt that I could not see it in other hands than mine. 224 THE CAR OF DESTINY While the Cherub compared the gifts with eloquence, I drew Mariquita apart. " I want that veil very much," said I ; "so much that I'll give you a hundred pesetas if you'll part with it." She opened her tobacco - brown eyes. " But the sefior is only a man, and cannot know that the bit of embroidered net is worth no more, in money, than fifteen pesetas at most." "It wasn't its money-worth I was thinking about." " A ah, I see ! The sefiorito yes, of course, it would be strange if he did not ! I love my new veil, not only because it is pretty, but more because it came to me from the most beautiful sefiorita I have ever seen. Still, since the sefiorito will value it even more than I can, I will give it to him, though not for the hundred pesetas. I will give it for nothing except his thanks." I told the girl she was too good ; that I could not rob her of the gift just made ; but she insisted, and I saw that her pride would be hurt if I refused. So I accepted, while a way of benefiting myself and rewarding her occurred to my mind. " You see how it is with me," I said, with a con- fidential air. " You have been very generous. Will you be helpful too ? " " You may trust me," she answered. " I love a love affair, especially if there is difficulty. I shall have an acknowledged tiovio myself soon, I hope. He is a bullfighter only a beginner, but he will be great one day, and though my father made a long face at first, now he shrugs his shoulders ; and when that is done, there is always hope. Her Majesty the mother makes the long face, does she not ? " THE GLORIFICATION OF MONICA 225 I nodded. " She will shrug the shoulders by and by." " I doubt it. But meanwhile, I've written a letter. Will you try to give it to the young lady ? " " Yes," said Mariquita. " I will try my best. I think I can do it. Not to-night, for she has gone to bed, and there would be no excuse to get back to her room, since I must pass through Her Majesty's. But to-morrow morning I will take the ladies' hot water, with oh, such an innocent face ! And I will take the letter too." " Thank you many times," said I. " The thing isn't done yet." " It's for your goodwill I thank you in advance. And this is for your bullfighter, as a present from his novia" I took out my scarfpin. Her face flushed with pleasure, as it would have flushed for no sum of money. She might have waived away a present for herself, but she could not resist one for the novio, and I was thanked far beyond the gift's merit. If she went to bed happy, so did I, for I believed that Monica would have my letter in the morning ; and if the wistfulness in her eyes meant some new trouble in which I had a part, I hoped that the words I had written might banish it CHAPTER XXIV THE GOODWILL OF MARIQUITA NEVERTHELESS I could not sleep on my hard but clean pillows, for wondering about that look of Monica's, and its meaning ; and whenever I shut my eyes, hordes of red and yellow figures poured out of white houses upon white roads, forming irritating, kaleidoscopic patterns on my tired retina. Each hour that passed was cried by the watchman, far away and then close under my window ; a fearsome cry like a groan of agony uttered by a madman in a dying spasm. I was glad when morning came; and after such a bath as two or three miniature jugs of water afforded (the deer-eyed boy wondered in the name of all the saints what I could do with so many), I threw off the brain-clouds of a sleepless night. Before long Monica would have my letter. She would know if she could have doubted that if I had loved her at first, I worshipped her now. She would know why we had not followed more closely yesterday ; and why unless Carmona chose to accept our help again we would go on before the grey car to-day. She would know also that my most earnest hope was to take her away, out of the reach of harm. I was dressed, and had had my coffee and hard, fat M THE GOODWILL OF MARIQUITA 227 roll of Spanish bread by half-past seven, as I was sure Ropes would be wanting to see me. I would not have disturbed Dick, who slept in a room across the patio, but I found him in the dining-room, wrestling with a glass of thick chocolate and a finger-shaped sweet biscuit. " I'm trying to like Spanish customs," said he. I laughed. " Because, if I'm going to carry through that scheme of mine about motor traffic, I may have to live on the spot, you see." " Oh ! " said I. " And what about Colonel O'Donnel's copper mines? Have you thought of a means to persuade him it's his duty to have them worked ? " " In a way, I have," Dick answered drily. " An indirect sort of way. What about our gasoline ? Heard anything about it ? " " No. I'm going to find Ropes." " Rather a sell for Carmona, if he did order our bidons pricked, to feel it's his fault if we're held up as long as he is." " There's Ropes in the patio" I said. " I'll go and interview him." " What news ? " I asked. " Well, sir, I did what the landlord said last night, and had a try for moto-naphtha as they call it here at the chemist's." " Did they have any ? " " Oh yes, sir, they had some. As much as a pint apiece, in the two shops. They wanted to sell it by the ounce." Dick and I laughed, though my mirth was not care- free. I had visions of being stuck at this place until 228 THE CAR OF DESTINY Ropes made a journey to Madrid and back, Carmona's car slipping away long before we were ready. " I was afraid it was hopeless to look for petrol here," I said, striving for resignation, even though I saw Mariquita going upstairs with two battered tins of hot water. " Not yet, sir. A man who heard me asking for moto-naphtha at the chemist's, advised me to try the cemetery." " The cemetery ? You misunderstood the word." " No, sir ; it was cemetery. And what's more, he said the Mayor keeps it there to kill lobsters." This statement, delivered somewhat nervously, was received with derision. " The fellow was stuffing you," said Dick. " I don't think so, sir." " Then he's mad," I insisted. " Fishing for lobsters with moto-naphtha in a cemetery at Manzanares is a story Baron Munchausen would have thought twice about before telling." " Langostas does mean langouste or lobsters, I suppose, sir ? " asked Ropes. " Ye es," I answered thoughtfully. Then light- ning flashed across the darkness of my mind. " It means locusts as well," said I. " They use petrol to kill locusts, and for some reason best known to them- selves keep it at the cemetery. We'll go, Ropes, and persuade them to sell us more than an ounce." " Right, sir. At once ? " " In a moment," said I. Mariquita, empty-handed, was coming downstairs. I waylaid her, under that portion of the balcony hidden from the window of Lady Vale- Avon's room. THE GOODWILL OF MARIQUITA 229 " Did you deliver the letter ? " I asked. " Yes, sefior." " To the young lady herself? " " To herself. But I must tell you what worries me, sefior. As I was leaving the outer room, I heard a sound like -a cry of distress, from the inner room. I looked back, and Her Majesty the mother had gone in. That is all I know. I could do nothing, whatever had happened, and I felt it would be well to escape before I could be questioned." " What do you think happened ? " " How can I tell, sefior ? Unless the terrible lady snatched your letter from the angel." " At least, I hope the angel had had time to read it." " I do not know, seiiorito. There was not much time ; but she might have been quick ; and if the letter was not long, there is still hope." This was poor comfort. All my joyous anticipations dashed, I tried to think of some way of finding out whether Monica had read my letter, and whether there were any way of smuggling another to her. The note had been written in such haste, that I scarcely knew what I had said. No name had been signed ; nevertheless, if Lady Vale- Avon read what I had written, she would say to herself, " It is not Cristobal O'Donnel who says these things, but a more dangerous man." If she had the letter, she could show it to Carmona; but, as I thought the matter over, I decided that it was unlikely she would do this. Spaniards, especially Spaniards with Moorish blood in their veins, do not like to think girls they love cap- able of carrying on secret correspondence with other 230 THE CAR OF DESTINY men ; and I imagined that Lady Vale-Avon was a woman to guess this. Already Carmona knew that Lady Monica was interested in someone else, or had a girlish fancy for him, which might or might not have been frightened away. But his desire for her would not be whetted by the fact that she was receiving letters from that someone else, perhaps sending them to him ; and it struck me that Lady Vale- A von would conceal the correspondence, rather than flaunt it in Carmona's face. If I were right, then I was as safe as before from the Duke's jealousy ; but, had Monica read my letter? On the alert as her mother would be now, I should find it more difficult than ever to communicate with the girl. Yet I could not bear to leave Manzanares in fear of a misunderstanding. Nothing more could be done at the moment, how- ever ; and I hurried Ropes off that we might finish our errand and get back by the time that Monica was down. It appeared that the man who had volunteered information about moto-naphtha was waiting to act as guide. He was still at the chemist's, and from there led us to the Casa Consistorial. At the Casa Consistorial were two policemen in the hall, warming themselves over a hole in the ground, where glowed charcoal embers. But the Mayor had not arrived. Without him nothing could be arranged. Besides, even if he were present and willing to consent, the key of the cemetery was with the cura, who might be anywhere. Off we dashed to the cura's house, and just in time. Five minutes later, and we might have had to THE GOODWILL OF MARIQUITA 231 wait hours for him. But there he was, a delightful, white-haired old man, who would be charmed to open the cemetery for our worships, since it was not to bury us ; but he could make no move in that direction without the honourable concurrence of the Mayor. Back, then, we bustled to the Casa Consistorial, with the sensation of shuttlecocks, played between battledores at cross purposes. But at last the second battledore was ready to send us in the right direction. The Mayor, a young man, who looked like a lawyer in tall hat and frock-coat, was as polite as only a Spaniard can be. He put himself, and his house, and Manzanares, at our service. It was something like being given the freedom of London ; and what was more to the point than any- thing else, he offered us as much moto-naphtha as the town possessed, at any price we pleased to pay. The question was, how much did the town possess ; a single quart, or a hundred gallons? The Mayor himself was not sure, so we rattled off in an ancient " sim6n " to the cemetery to find out ; and luckily were able to carry away all we were likely to need for the next two days, while leaving some for the locusts. But between the Casa Consistorial, the house of the cura, the distant cemetery, and the drive back to our stable-garage, it had taken us nearly three hours to achieve our end. Then there was a little lingering with the car, to make sure that all was well and no more tricks had been played ; and the walk back to the fonda exhausted the last of my patience. I had not expected to be gone more than an hour, and I had been gone three. Meanwhile, I said to myself, 232 THE CAR OF DESTINY almost anything might have happened. My idea had been to get back by the time that Monica was dressed, and now, for all I could tell, she might have gone. Dick laughed at this suggestion, for, said he, Carmona's chauffeur was not a worker of miracles except, perhaps, on other men's cars ; and he could not have got his master's in order and ready to start. His arguments were reasonable ; nevertheless, like many other plausible deductions, they were wrong ; for the first news we heard at the hotel was that the grey auto- mobile had left nearly an hour before. The chauffeur it seemed, had been up all night working, and had had assistance in the early morning at a machine shop. The injuries had been patched up, and the car was expected to get on either to Andujar, or Linares if a certain bridge had been finished. After all, this was not as bad as if we had made no promise to the Duchess. We were bound not to lie in wait for, or closely follow, her son's car ; and had it not been for the " luck of the Dream-Book," Carmona and his party would have been far away last night when we arrived at Manzanares. Had I not been tortured by doubts about the fate of my letter, I would have been philosopher enough to say : " Patience, until Sevilla ! " As it was, patience was the last virtue I could culti- vate ; and for what remained of that day, I was unable to find the smallest pleasure in motoring. Again we were on the highroad between Madrid and Sevilla ; yet the waving ruts and ridges of hardened mud were sprinkled with a green glaze of grass, as if in treacherous attempt at concealment Dust curled behind us like smoke, creeping under the tarpaulin that covered our luggage on the roof, and THE GOODWILL OF MARIQUITA 233 into our suit-cases, powdering our clothing like fine white sugar. Despite the good springs and deep cushions of the car, Pilar's light body danced up and down, as Dick said, like a bit of American popcorn over a hot fire ; and our two guests, who had thought themselves motor enthusiasts, did not respond ardently to Dick's forced praises of the sport. How glorious, said he (every other word emphasised with a bump), how glorious not to be bound down to the fixed and inconvenient hours of trains. To stop where and when you like ; to start on again when you choose ; never to have your view of the choicest bit of scenery blotted out in a tunnel ; to be grimed by no railway smoke ; always to feel your face fanned by a fresh breeze, tingling with ozone ; to read if you had the seeing eye the whole life of the country in writing on the road ; the tracks of heavy carts ; the delicate prints of donkeys' feet, trotting to market laden with wine or fruit ; the tracing of diligence wheels, or old- fashioned carriages on their way to a bullfight ; the footmarks ot peasants economically carrying their shoes over their shoulders ; the clover-like imprint of sheep's little hoofs, and goats' ; the pads of shepherd dogs. To flash through kinematographic glimpses of vineland and oliveland, and graceful blue mountain shapes ; to see strange villages of whose existence you would never know when plodding along by train ; to fly from one living reminder of Don Quixote to another, as we were doing to-day (had we not seen the inn where he was knighted ?) Bang ! Never before can I remember hailing with delight the pistol-like report which can mean but one thing; the bursting of a tyre. But I 234 THE CAR OF DESTINY was enchanted that Dick's eloquence should be interrupted. We had jolted through wine-making Valdepenas, where the red juice of the grape seems to spout from a grey valley of stones ; we had passed, in the quaint market-place, the posada which Don Quixote knew ; we had bounced through Santa Cruz de Mudela, with its fins old fifteenth-century church, and had seen its famou* and gaily coloured garters exposed for sale in the shops ; and now we were far from towns or villages, out in the country. Luckily, everybody was ready for hinch, and Filar and the Cherub had had the forethought to order things which would not have occurred to Dick or me. Not far away, on the crest of a hill-billow stood a roadmender's house, with an outside, adobe oven like a huge beehive. We crawled to it, travelling on the collapsed tyre, and were served by a delightful brown family ; served as if we had been the King and his suite, who had lunched (so said the brown family) on that spot a few weeks ago. Out came the chairs which the King and his friends had sat in, plates and glasses from which the King and his friends had drunk ; and the simple people derived a childlike pleasure from dwelling on the episode. As before, the news of our presence seemed to flash through the air and bring, in the same mysterious way, an audience out of empty space. Pilar said that the people who came were in reality wild birds, seen by our sophisticated eyes in the form of human beings; and as if they had been wild birds, we coaxed them, till they trusted us and fed with us, drinking from our wineskin the blood of the Spanish grape, almost THE GOODWILL OF MARIQUITA 235 innocent of alcohol. The soft Spanish language, as it fell from their lips, was rich as the taste of that Spanish wine on the tongue, and stirred in my heart a pride of kinsmanship. While we others lunched, Ropes jacked up the Gloria and changed the inner tube, pausing now and then to munch a sandwich or swallow a draught of wine with an unruffled air characteristic of him. When the roadmender mentioned that four bandidos had been captured in the morning by the Civil Guard, on the road along which we had passed, his expression did not change by the twitching of a muscle. Indeed, he looked equal to disposing of half a dozen brigands without the aid of a single Guardia Civil. After forty minutes by the wayside, we set off to penetrate farther into that melancholy country which Cervantes loved, and almost at once were in the Venta de Cardenas, that wide and stony waste where Don Quixote rode to do his penance. The gayest spirits must have been dashed by the gloom of the knight's self-imposed prison, and mine were not improved. I had a disquieting impression that Monica's voice, calling an appeal, came echoing from the mountain walls. Of course, there was nothing in it, except super- stitious nonsense of which I ought to be ashamed ; yet I could not shut my ears to her voice, which seemed to cry the words her fingers once had written : " Don't desert me ! Don't leave me alone ! " Always the echo followed, as the car mounted higher on the slopes of the Sierra Morena, and such glories of Spain opened out before our eyes as we had not seen yet, even in the splendid Gorge of Pancorbo, 236 THE CAR OF DESTINY Crest above crest, great chains of mountains cut the smooth sapphire of the sky ; and as we serpentined into their closer grasp, each loop of the Alpine road gave a new and more fantastic combination of rock and stream. The car was boring into a gorge of astounding sublimity, a hammer-stroke of Vulcan which had cleft the mountain and left behind chips of copper, of gold, of silver, and a rich sprinkling of precious gems. As the god's hammer fell, out of the ruin it made were shaped marvels of form ; Olympian castles and giant statues, images of such savage creatures as roamed devastating the earth in days when man was in his childhood. Even the calm countenance of Ropes was trans- figured by this burst of splendour. " Makes you forget that roads can be bad, and tyres go wrong, doesn't it, sir ? " he said to me. " I could drive through places like these, day and night on end, without food or drink, never knowing if I was done up." And praise from a chauffeur is praise indeed ! We were in the defile of Despefiaperros, the most terrific and, at the same time, the noblest gorge of Spain ; and I should have known it from stories told by my father, who had once fought with bandoleros upon this very road. Down into the river that tossed up white plumes of foam far below, he had flung one man, while another fired shot after shot from his carbine, screened behind a rock on the opposite side of the ravine, scarcely a biscuit-throw away. Long before, too, history had been made in this mountain passage whose walls had rung with wilder sounds than the screaming of our siren. The rival THE GOODWILL OF MARIQUITA 237 battle-cries of Moor and Spaniard had echoed among the rocks, and Christian blood and pagan had mingled in the white spume of the river. I thought of these things, as I looked down into the silent depths of the gulf, and saw the sparkling veins of granite, and purple masses of slate gleam with volcanic life and colour. But still I heard the haunting echo of Monica's voice, in the solitude through which she must lately have passed, perhaps leaving some message, if I could only know. Was it merely a fantastic twist of my nerves, or was her spirit calling, trying to make itself heard and understood ? It was Filar who broke the spell by a sudden clapping of her hands. " Andalucia ! dear Andalucia ! " she cried ; and each one of us, subdued and silenced by the majesty of the scene, started as if waking from sleep. She was pointing at a stone obelisk, looking at which her father smiled and raised his hat. " No more cold," said he ; " no more winds to nip our noses. Here's the dividing line between the north countries and the country of the sun." Then, as if the obelisk had been the finger of some genie invoking a magic change, an enchantment blurred the stern features of the landscape. It was as if the fierce face of an angry giant had been trans- formed into that of a beautiful, laughing woman with the sun in her eyes. The defile opened when we had slipped past a half- hidden mountain hamlet or two ; widened into a valley bright with colour as the jewels on the spread tail of a peacock ; and boatlike, the car rode an undulating sea 238 THE CAR OF DESTINY of green and azure and gold, that scintillated as if a spray of diamonds were tossed into air with the speed of our going. At Santa Elena we were in a Spain I had not seen. At La Carolina we burst into a world fair and fertile as the Garden of Eden ; and I remembered the Moorish legend that Heaven is built on the blue that hangs over Andalucfa. Hedges of aloe brandished zincen swords and darts ; cacti sprawled and leered along the roadside ; set in the vivid green of ripening grain, olive groves seemed carved from jade ; or the bare rosy shoulders of sloping hillsides turned by contrast their pale tints to tarnished silver. Vines with young gold leaves trailed the purple earth ; avenues of acacias dripped perfumes ; and as the sun leaned towards the west, the quivering pink light on violet mountains gave to Andaluci'a the vivid, almost violent colouring one sees in sensational posters. Each girl we passed wore a bright flower shining starlike through the black cloud of her hair. The men had discarded the fur-trimmed Louis XL caps for the broad-brimmed, grey sombreros de Cordoba, and the horses or mules were harnessed with gay splashes of red and blue colour, and bobbing tassels. We had talked of Linares, the lead-mining town, as a halting-place for the night, as we were pledged not to track down the Lecomte ; and on the outskirts of Bailen, as twilight fell, the Gloria was brought to a sudden stop in the midst of a pulsating crowd, that we mi^ht ask the way. If we aroused their curiosity, they piqued us to the same emotion, for most of the men, and there were THE GOODWILL OF MARIQUITA 239 hundreds, not only wore upon their legs a kind of divided pinafore, but carried on their backs an apparatus which would have excited wonder in any other than this fairy country. The machine reminded me at first glance of a fire- extinguisher ; then of some appliance used by miners to hold a supply of oxygen. One part of me wished to know what the instrument was ; the other preferred to remain in ignorance, lest the explanation should prove too commonplace. But Waring had all my curiosity, and none of my scruples; so he asked a question with a gesture more intelligible than his Spanish; and just as I had feared, the weird union of reservoirs and nozzles was no more than a con- trivance for spraying vines to protect them from phylloxera. As always, we brought the fascinations of the Cherub to bear upon the crowd, as one trains the latest gun upon the enemy; and his crooning brought out facts which made Dick think it high time he got things into shape, and his motor service to running. It seemed that once upon a time a good road had been made from Bailen to Linares, but the road was crossed by a river ; and when the masonry supports for a bridge had been built, it turned out that girders had been forgotten. Somehow, it was nobody's place to jog anybody else's memory, and there the matter had ended, so long ago that grass and flowers had sprouted among the futile stones. It appeared the most natural thing