GLORIOUS, wonderful Alhambra! Magical Cuadrado de Leicestero! Philippa
and I were as happy as children, and the house was full every night.
We called everything by Spanish names, and played perpetually at being
Spaniards.
The _foyer_ we named a _patio_--a space fragrant with the perfume of
oranges, which the public were always sucking, and perilous with peel.
Add to this a refreshment-room, _refectorio_, full of the rarest old
_cigarros_, and redolent of _aqua de soda and aguardiente_. Here the
_botellas_ of _aqua de soda_ were continually popping, and the _corchos_
flying with a murmur of merry voices and of mingling waters. Here half
through the night you could listen to--
The delight of happy laughter,
The delight of low replies.
With such surroundings, almost those of a sybarite, who can blame me
for being lulled into security, and telling myself that my troubles were
nearly at an end? Who can wonder at the _cháteaux en Espagne_ that I
built as I lounged in the _patio_, and assisted my customers to consume
the _media aqua de soda_, or ‘split soda,’ of the country? Sometimes we
roamed as far as the Alcazar; sometimes we wandered to the Oxford, or
laughed light-heartedly in the stalls of the _Alegria_.
Such was our life. So in calm and peace (for we had secured a Tory
_chuckerouto_ from Birmingham) passed the even tenor of out days.
As to marrying Philippa, it had always been my _intention_.
Whether she was or was not Lady Errand; whether she had or had not
precipitated the hour of her own widowhood, made no kind of difference
to me.
A moment of ill-judged haste had been all her crime.
That moment had passed. Philippa was not that moment. I was not marrying
that moment, but Philippa.
Picture, then, your Basil naming and insisting on the day, yet somehow
the day had not yet arrived. It did, however, arrive at last.
The difficulty now arose under which name was Philippa to be married?
To tell you the truth, I cannot remember under which name Philippa _was_
married. It was a difficult point. If she wedded me under her maiden
name, and if Mrs. Thompson’s letter contained the truth, then would the
wedding be legal and binding?
If she married me under the name of Lady Errand, and if Mrs. Thompson’s
letter was false, then would the wedding be all square?
So far as I know, there is no monograph on the subject, or there was
none at the time.
Be it as it may, wedded we were.
Morality was now restored to the show business, the legitimate drama
began to look up, and the hopes of the Social Science Congress were
fulfilled.
But evil days were at hand.
One day, Philippa and I were lounging in the _patio_, when I heard the
young _hidalgos_--or _Macheros_, as they are called--talking as they
smoked their princely _cigaritos_.
‘Sir Runan Errand,’ said one of them; ‘where he’s gone under. A rare bad
lot he was.’
‘Murdered,’ replied the other. ‘Nothing ever found of him but his hat.’
‘What a rum go!’ replied the other.
I looked at Philippa. She had heard all. I saw her dark brow contract in
anguish. She was beating her breast furiously--her habit in moments of
agitation.
Then I seem to remember that I and the two _hidalgos_ bore Philippa to
a couch in the _patio_, while I smiled and smiled and talked of the heat
of the weather!
When Philippa came back to herself, she looked at me with her wondrous
eyes and said,--
‘Basil; tell me the square truth, honest Injun! What had I been up to
that night?’