Chapter 6

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 exclamation.

“El Duque de Carmona!” echoed the Cherub.

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

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

“You know the Duke?” I asked.

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

“You don’t like him?”

“Do we like the Duke, Papa?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Colonel O’Donnel laughed his gentle, chuckling laugh.

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

“That’s like him,” said I.

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

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

“Which won?” asked the girl.

“My father.”

“Be sure he will remember,” said she. “Oh, how I wish we could help you! It would be such a revenge upon him for poor Eulalia and for Corcito. Papa, _can’t_ we do something?”

“If we could,” echoed the Cherub, “_for his father’s son!_”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“But what about your brother Cristóbal?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

XII

UNDER A BALCONY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She had had my message, and answered it.

XIII

WHAT HAPPENED IN THE CATHEDRAL

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The old Duchess of Carmona, brown, stout, yet somehow stately, and the tall figure of Lady Vale-Avon advanced towards 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.