“Motor to Biarritz? You must be mad,” said 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 fiancée,” 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 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 V; 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 released, 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 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 anything 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 Cornish Trevenna, and changed Cristóbal, my middle name, into
Christopher.
We took our first meal in the restaurant, and everyone 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 Trevenna.”
“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. “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, who sits always in the tonneau, had already
heard all about the King’s automobile, and was primed with particulars. He
leaned across to describe its appearance, 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; blond, violet-eyed, with radiant
complexions; but one seemed to me beautiful as the Blessed Damozel 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 conventional 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. Yet 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, and I had fallen very
far, and very deep. 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. Sooner could I lose life itself. If she were the Princess who was to
be Queen of Spain, I would follow her to 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 had come. It and I would be one,
for always. 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 might 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 at Biarritz,” I answered. It was
true. I needed to find out whether she was the Princess, or—just a girl.