Chapter 25

If she had not been given the message, what guarantee had I that she would receive the other far more important?

It was in a fever of uncertainty that I must spend the next four-and-twenty hours.

XXXVII

DREAMS AND AN AWAKENING

That night, in my villa above “the road of the great Moor-killing,” the nightingales were the only _serenos_. Their song was the song of the stars; and the song of the stars was the song of the nightingales. At dawn, from my window, I was taken into the private life of my neighbour birds. I heard them wake each other; I saw them make their toilets; and from the town far below my terraced garden the sound of bells came up—church bells, bells of mules and horses beginning work, while their masters sang _coplas_ with a lilting Moorish wail.

Once again I went down to look at Carmona’s door, to find it still kept by guardia civile; and most of the day I spent in the Alhambra, seeing rooms and courts I had missed yesterday, looking down often into the _patio_ of the palace in the Albaicín.

I dined in the hotel garden, and before nine I was at the appointed spot in the road outside the high wall of my Carmen. The moments passed as I walked up and down, my cigarette a spot of fire in the growing moonlight; still the gypsy-faced girl did not come.

Twenty minutes late, said my watch, and as I stared at it, a man stopped in front of me.

“Is the noble señor expecting someone?” he asked.

I put my watch away and looked at him. The moon, obscured though it was by clouds, showed a tall figure, with strong shoulders, and a face which seemed in the night as dark as a Moor’s. The man had lifted his hat from his thick black hair, and I said to myself that he was a model for an artist who wished to paint a gypsy.

Finding that I did not answer on the instant, he went on—

“The señor must forgive me if I have made a mistake; but my sister, who had an errand to do for a gentleman, has sent me in her place.”

“In that case you have made no mistake,” I said. “You have a message for me from your sister?”

“And from a lady. The message is, that if the señor will come to my house in an hour, he will find what he seeks.”

My blood quickened.

“What do I seek?”

“A lady who loves you, and has sent you this through my sister.”

The man produced a tiny white paper packet which I took, but would not open in his presence.

“Do you mean that the lady will, meet me at your house—to-night?” I asked.

“She hopes it, for there is no other place or way. My sister will bring the lady; but it is not a house, in your way of speaking, señor. It is a cave in the hillside which I have made my home, for I am a _gitano_.”

“You live above the Albaicín, in the gypsy quarter, then?” I said.

“No, señor, nearer here than that. You must have seen, if you have walked about the neighbourhood, that there are many other caves which honeycomb the hillsides. To find mine you must go towards the cemetery, take the first turn to the right, follow the winding road which descends, then up a rough path, and stop at the first of the three gypsy caves. I must not wait for you, as I have to see that my sister and the lady arrive safely. But you cannot miss the place; and if I am not waiting at the door, open it without knocking and walk in. Is that understood, señor?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Then I will go to watch for my sister near the palace. At half-past ten, señor.”

“At half-past ten.” I echoed his words, and watched him out of sight as he tramped away in the direction which would take him to the Albaicín. Then I hurried back to the villa and opened the packet. It contained the shield-shaped Toledo brooch by the gift of which I had infuriated Carmona; that, and nothing besides. But—unless it had been stolen from her—it was an assurance that she had sent the messenger, that she wished me to trust him.

Nevertheless, there was danger that I might fall into a trap in keeping a night tryst at the cave of a gypsy, especially a gypsy who had either deserted or been banished from the colony. But not to run this risk was to run a far greater one, that of losing the chance offered by Monica; and of such an alternative I could not even think.

If I told the man, Pepe, who looked after my wants at the villa where I intended to go, I might succeed in compromising Monica, in case she were so late that Pepe was alarmed. As her name must be kept out of the affair at any cost, I decided that due caution would be protection enough. Unless the news of my presence in Granada had reached Carmona in his bed, there was little fear of treachery; and when I slipped into my hip pocket the revolver bought in Madrid, I felt that I was safe.

It was a dark and lonely road, that way of the dead. Not a soul had I met when I reached a narrow path, a mere goat track, leading higher up the hillside to a row of four or five tiny lighted windows in the rock. These must, I knew, mark the cave dwellings of which the gypsy had spoken, some little offshoot from the main settlement by the Albaicín. The door which I reached first was closed. No one stood waiting, but I opened it and went in.

A faint light, cast by a small paraffin lamp set in a niche hollowed out of the whitewashed rock, made darkness visible in a tiny room with a rough earthen floor. A red calico curtain at the far end signified a second cave-room beyond. No one was visible, no one answered when I spoke, and I sat down to wait on a dilapidated rush-bottomed chair which stood with its back to the red curtain.

After that, nothing.

And then, dreams.

There was one dream about a room, a large room it seemed to be, shadowy in the corners, and with walls where Christian and Moorish warriors fought in tapestry, leaping off sometimes on their stallions, and spurring back into place again.

In the room was a great bed with dark silk curtains. A man lay in it, but suddenly sat up, and looked eagerly at something which seemed to be myself, dead or dying. But I did not care. I knew who he was, and that we hated each other for some reason which I could not remember, but it was impossible to recall his name. That was twisted up in a thousand skeins of silk; or was it a woman’s yellow hair?

The man exclaimed, “Good—very good,” more than once to someone I could not see. Then he said, when the someone else had spoken, “Only keep him till after I’m married. I don’t care what you do with him after that. Fling him into a well, or let him go. Either way he can never find out or prove anything troublesome.”

This was all of that part of the dream, though there was another which came soon after, and was somehow connected with it. It was a dream about a long dark passage, which smelled like a cellar, and I was being dragged through it by two voices, a thing which did not appear at all out of the ordinary, though it was disagreeable.

After that, concrete thoughts were lost in one tremendous throbbing ache, which was in the back of my head at first, but spread slowly down the spine, until at last my whole body felt as if it had been pounded with giant hammers.

I had an idea at one time that I had fallen into the power of the Inquisition, and been tortured by the head screw and the rack, because often a man in a black _capucha_ flitted about me; but later I realized that my suffering was caused by becoming conscious of the world’s motion—a terrible, ceaseless whirling, which, being once felt, could be escaped only in death.

This was appalling. I lived through many years of the horror, but I fell off the world at last on to another planet, where there came a period of peace.

When I waked up I was looking at my hands.

To my great surprise they were no longer brown and strong as a young man’s hands ought to be, but of a sickly white, and so thin that I found myself laughing at them in a slow, soft way, as one laughs in one’s sleep.

At first it did not seem to matter that I should have hands like that; but suddenly, with a rush of blood to the heart, I realized that it was unnatural, dreadful, that something hideous must have happened to me.

In a moment my head was clear, and I felt as if a tight band had been taken off my forehead.

Yes, something had happened, but what?

I looked round and saw a room unfamiliar, yet already hated. It was a small, but beautiful room, the walls covered with Moorish work, such as I had seen at the Alhambra. I lay on a divan-bed, in an alcove without windows; but in the room beyond, I saw one with a dainty filigree frame, supported by a marble pillar. There was also an archway, from which a curtain was pushed aside, and I could see the end of a marble bath.

How had I come to this place? Where was it, and how long had I been there? were the next questions I asked myself.

There was no more dreaming now. The room was real; and the whiteness and emaciation of my hands were real. A man must have been very ill, and for a long time, to have hands as white and thin as that.

Suddenly I sat up, crying aloud, “Monica!”

The sound of her name brought her image before me. What horrible thing had been done to me that I should have forgotten her very existence?

Strength failed, and I fell back, a dampness coming out on my forehead. Above all, what had been done to her? “Don’t leave me alone,” she had begged; yet I had deserted her. I was—here.

The motoring days came back to me; happy, hopeful days in the open air. How long ago were they that I should be thus broken, that I should feel like a man grown old?

Slowly, and cold as the trail of a snake, a thought crawled into my mind.

I remembered a short story I had read once. It was by Gertrude Atherton, and at the time I had thought it the most harrowing story ever written. A woman had gone to sleep, young, beautiful, beloved. She had waked to find her hair grey, her hands old and veined. Twenty blank years of madness she had spent in a lunatic asylum, after being driven mad by a shock, waking to sanity at last only to find herself an old woman.

Had I been mad? Was I old now, with my wasted white hands?

Tingling with dread I touched my face. My chin was rough with a stubble of beard. I fancied there were hollows in my cheeks. Was my hair grey?

Somewhere there must be a mirror. I tried to struggle up and find it, that I might see my own image and know the worst; but a giddiness came over me, and I had to lie down again, or I knew that I should faint.

“I have Carmona to thank for this,” I said aloud, furiously. But then I asked myself, how did I know that there ever had been a Carmona, that there ever had been a girl called Monica Vale? Perhaps I had dreamed them both, in the time of madness.

There had been many dreams. Suddenly I remembered a man’s voice saying: “Only keep him till after I’m married.” The voice had been Carmona’s. I knew that now.

No, I had never been mad. A horrible trick had been played on me—in the gypsy’s cave. I remembered that. Everything was blank since, except for the dreams. Perhaps some of them had been true. Perhaps, half-unconscious—(for somebody must have come out from behind that red curtain and struck me on the head)—I had been taken to him, that he might be sure it was the right man. Somebody had been ordered to keep me, until after—Again I sat up, with a groan. I must get out of this. I must save Monica from the man, and from her own mother. But—if it was already too late?

There was a sound in the room. From a door I could not see, someone had come in. A key had turned, and was being turned again. The dream of the Inquisition came back to my mind, for the man in the black _capucha_ stood looking at me.

“Who are you?” I asked. Although for many years I had spoken English, and Spanish only for a few weeks, it was mechanically that I used Spanish now.

“Your good friend,” came from under the _capucha_, while there was a glitter of eyes through the two slanting slits in the black silk.

“If you’re my friend, you’ll let me out of this place, wherever it is,” I said.

“But I am your doctor as well, and you are too weak to go out. This is the first time you have spoken sensible words, and now they are not wise.”

“I’m not too weak to hear how I came here, how long I have been, and—” He cut me short, with a wave of a yellow old hand. Under the _capucha_ he wore an ordinary black coat, such as elderly Spaniards of the middle class wear every day.

“You must not excite yourself,” he said. “As for your coming here, I found you lying in the road one dark night, with your head cut open, and out of compassion I brought you into my house.”

“If you are a doctor, and have no reason to hide your face from me, why do you cover it up with a _capucha_?” I went on incredulously.

“It is the _capucha_ of the _cofradìa_ to which I belong,” explained the man. “I wear it at certain hours because of a vow which will not expire till Corpus Christi. If I were a wicked person, who wished you harm, why need I trouble to hide my face so that you should not know it again? I live alone in this house, and if I wished you evil, I need never let you leave these rooms. But instead, I have taken care of you, and you have repaid some experiments I have made, for now I think you are getting well. You have only to be patient.”

“Tell me how long since you played good Samaritan and picked me up by the roadside,” said I. “Then perhaps I shall try to be patient.”

“How long?” he echoed. “I can’t tell you that. To a philosopher like me days and weeks are much the same.”

“Philosophers have often been in the pay of dukes,” I said.

“Those days have passed. I live my life without dukes.”

“Without the Duke of Carmona?”

“The Duke of Carmona? That is a mere name to me. Why do you speak it?”

“I think you can guess.”

“I fear that after all your brain is not clear. We must have a little more of the good medicine.”

Before I knew what he meant to do, he was out of the alcove, and out of sight in the room beyond. Again I tried my strength, and would have followed, but before I could do more than struggle up from the bed, the door had been unlocked, and locked again.

“He must keep the key in his pocket,” I thought.

I did not believe a word of the plausible explanations. The continued mental effort I had been making had cleared, rather than tired my brain; and I was out of that black sea of horror in which I had been drowning.

I had not been mad, and I could not have been in this house for many weeks, since the man in the _capucha_ talked of Corpus Christi as still in the future.

I remembered Colonel O’Donnel’s telegram, and his mention of a man in Granada whom Carmona valued above many doctors. It seemed not impossible that this person and my “good friend” were one and the same; but if—weak as I was now—I hoped to get out of his house alive, perhaps I had better change my tactics, and keep my suspicions to myself, until I should recover strength. If the man believed that he had convinced me of his innocence and kindly intentions, he would perhaps think it easier to let me live than to put me violently out of the way.

I made up my mind to cultivate a more reasonable spirit, until my body might help me defend other convictions. And one thing gave me courage to keep the resolution. The fact that my host was not willing yet to discharge me as cured, argued that there was still a strong motive for detaining me behind locked doors. The time of which Carmona had spoken in my dream had not come. He was not married yet, and I said to myself that he never would be, if it depended on Monica’s consent to be his wife.

Since that hour in the cathedral of Seville nothing would make her believe me disloyal, I thought; therefore nothing could make her disloyal to me.

Knowing little of illness, I trusted that, after all, I had not been put away here for long. Maybe a few days of fever and delirium would waste the hands and bleach out the brown stain of sunburn. At the moment, though I was young, and had been strong, I would have no chance against even an old man; but if I ate, and could crawl up to take a little exercise, a day or two ought to make a vast difference.

I was still of this mind when the _capucha_ came back. So softly did he unlock the door that I did not hear him, but he was not as stealthy about locking it again. He had brought me a glass of milk; and when I had drunk it he asked me to get up, and let him judge of my strength.

Weak as I was, I felt that I could have risen, but I determined to fight him with his own weapons. Making a faint effort, I fell back on the pillows, and closed my eyes.

“It will take many more glasses of milk before you need again ask ‘But when do I leave you?’ ” said the voice through the _capucha_.

I agreed, and pleased myself with my strategy after the man had gone out, until to my alarm I was overcome with sleep.

He had put something into the milk.

XXXVIII

THE FOUNTAIN

The delicate fretwork of the walls was blurred in twilight when I waked from heavy, irresistible sleep.

I felt dull, but could trace no other bad effect from the drug. Indeed, I fancied that I was stronger; and very slowly, with occasional rests, I got upon my feet and began to crawl about the room.

There was very little furniture, but what there was, was good, and of a graceful Moorish design which suited the wall decoration, and the horseshoe shape of the window. This had an elaborate lattice of wood, which let in plenty of air, as there was no glass; but outside were six stout bars of iron, and the lattice was securely fastened. I stared through the pattern of wood into a very small but charming _patio_, paved with brick and tiles, and having in the centre a fountain, with a shallow basin. Feathery plumes of water played over a few low palms in great blue and white pots of Triana ware, but as I looked the plumes shrank almost to nothing, then ceased to wave. The fountain was asleep for the night.

Supporting myself with a hand on the wall, I got to the room of the marble bath. There, the window was but a foot square, and was set high in the wall. On a low, carved bench, lay the clothing I had worn on the night of my visit to the gypsy’s cave. I sat down, and explored the pockets. What money I had had—six or seven hundred pesetas, so far as I could remember—was gone; so was my gold watch, and the revolver I had so gaily carried as a sure means of self-protection.

“Gypsy perquisites,” I said to myself, but the sight of the clothes brought back the past so vividly that I could see myself bidding good-bye to Dick at the railway station. Loyal, resourceful old Dick! Why had he not found his friend in all this time, while my hands were growing white and thin?

Surely there must have been some hue or cry, when I did not appear either at the villa or the hotel? A man cannot vanish off the face of the earth, I told myself, and leave no trace. I longed for the man with the _capucha_ to come back, so that I could ask him more questions, even though I could put no faith in his answers; but he did not appear again that night. I slept after a time, a sleep of exhaustion; and when I waked in broad daylight, I found a glass of milk on a small Moorish stand by the bed.

I could not bear to drink it, lest the same drug should make me sleep as before. But how regain strength without food? And evidently I was to have this or none.

For a time I waited, hoping that my “good friend” would come, and that, if I told him I disliked milk, he would give me something else, not so easy to mix with a drug. At last, however, I grew faint. Perhaps, I thought, the milk was innocent this time. I drank, and the same heaviness overcame me. So, through most of the day I slept, and raged against myself when I awoke.

Again, a full glass stood by the bedside, but I would not drink. Many hours of dozing had left me wakeful; and my eyes were wide open when, an hour or two after dawn, the door in the outer room was softly unlocked.

He had not forgotten his _capucha_, though he must have expected to find me asleep. In his hand was a glass of milk, but when he had seen that I lay awake, he saw also that the other glass had not been touched.

I was neither hungry no thirsty, I said in excuse. And I could not rest because I was not comfortable. It had got upon my nerves, I explained, to feel my hair long on my neck and my face unshaven. Would my host get in a barber?

The man reflected for a moment, and then said that he would do his best as a barber. At present, and until his vow had been accomplished, he did not go out, except after nightfall, and therefore could not ask anyone to come to the house.

The instant he had turned his back, I slipped off the bed, so that I might be ready to stagger as well as I could from my alcove, and pounce upon him when he had the door open; for I believed that I was strong enough now to have some chance. But his hearing must have been keen, for he turned, and told me not to exert myself. What—I was only getting up so as to be ready when he came back with shears and razor? I need not trouble. He would do all while I was in bed; and he would wait until he had seen me return there.

He was master of the situation, and knew it. I was obliged to give him his way; and afterwards he was so quick in getting to the door that, in my weak state, I could not have reached him in time.

When he came back, however, I was ready. Waiting just inside the door, as it was cautiously opened I threw myself upon him. But I had overestimated my strength, and underestimated his. Quick and lithe as a leopard, the old man wound himself round me, and for a moment we struggled together for the mastery, I thinking of the razor he had promised to bring, and hoping to get it. If I could do that, I should be able to keep him at bay, without any violence, save threats.

Once, I had almost got him down, or he let me fancy it; but with a sudden twist he caused me to lose my balance, which was none too steady. I slipped on the tiled floor, and had half saved myself when a quick push sent me staggering back. Instantly the _capucha_ was on the other side of the door, a bolt slid into place, and the key turned in the lock.

Rage gave me a brief spurt of strength. I caught up the carved wooden bench in the bathroom, and dashed it furiously again and again against a panel of the door. But the strong wood did not even crack under my blows.

As hour after hour passed, and I was left alone, from time to time I renewed my efforts, with no result except that eventually I broke the bench. Then I tore at the lattice of the window, thrusting my fingers through, and trying vainly to pull the woodwork to pieces. Though the iron bars on the outside would prevent my escaping into the _patio_, I thought, if the lattice were broken, shouts might be heard more easily.

At last, when I had been obliged to give up hope, I pressed my face against the close pattern of the woodwork and yelled lustily, till my voice failed. But my own shouts were the only sounds I heard, save distant church bells, and the singing of subterranean waters, silent only at night when the fountain went to sleep. It would be all but impossible, I had to admit, for anyone outside to judge the direction of a cry, coming through a screened window surrounded on all sides by high house walls.

Darkness fell; and I grew so hungry that I would gladly have drunk the milk left since morning. I tasted it, and found it spoiled by the heat, for the day had been warm. In disgust I threw it away, but when all that night had gone and part of the next day, I regretted my fastidiousness.

Frequent draughts of water from the room of the marble bath gave me an occasional fillip, but a man recovering from congestion of the brain or some such malady, following the breaking of his head, cannot live long on water; and it was clear that my host, disgusted with my “ingratitude,” intended to punish me cruelly or to put an end to me by starvation.