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 Andalucía) Señor 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’Donnel’s 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 Angèle. 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
Angèle’s way of leaving it open for me to introduce myself as I pleased;
but now there was no secret with which I would not have felt 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 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.