Through a flowery field of cloth-of-gold we came, while the afternoon was
young, into Cordoba—“Kartuba the Important,” lying like a grave entombing
its dead glory, prone at the foot of tombstone mountains.
After the dazzle of wild-flowers shining in the sun, and the ozone of
country breezes, a sudden entrance into the network of narrow streets was
like being thrown, without a clue, into the Minotaur’s dark labyrinth.
I had thought that no town could have narrower streets than Toledo; but
the streets of Cordoba were mere slits between house-walls. As we scraped
through on the car, Dick likened the town to a huge white cake divided
into slices by a sharp knife, but left in shape with only one or two
pieces pulled out to loosen the mass.
Still, the stone-paved slits contrived to make pictures; with here and
there a pair of splendid Moorish doors, a row of ancient eastern-patterned
windows, or a fairy glimpse of a sunlit _patio_ beyond a tunnel of shadow;
a fountain spraying jewels, a waving of palms and glow of hanging roses.
“She’s sure to be here,” I said to myself, as we stopped at last before
the principal hotel. “Since the journey’s supposed to be a pleasure trip,
Carmona’s bound to give his guests time to see the sights of Cordoba.”
But nothing was known of the Duke and his party at the hotel, although
there was a rumour that an automobile had passed through the town in the
morning.
The Cherub, consulted, was of opinion that if Carmona’s car had come, it
must have remained.
“There’d be nowhere for them to stop afterwards short of Seville,” he
said, “unless Carmona, and that’s near Seville. They must be lurking in
Cordoba—perhaps at the Marqués de Villa-blanca’s, who’s a friend of the
Duke’s. We shall come across our lovely little lady presently, if we get
about in the town; in the Paseo del Gran Capitán, or the Patio de los
Naranjos, or the cathedral, or by the ruins of the Alcázar.”
“Besides, I thought you’d made up your mind not to worry till we got to
Seville,” said Dick.
“So I had,” I answered. “But I have a feeling as if something had gone
wrong.”
“Any reason for the feeling—except the feeling itself?” asked Dick.
I shook my head, not caring to mention the letter that might have gone
astray. “Nothing I can define.”
“Then I guess it’s all right, and you’re developing nerves.”
“I know _just_ how he feels,” said Pilar, with a reproachful look at Dick,
with whom she was at odds since the episode of the bull. “There was an
expression in Lady Monica’s eyes, wasn’t there, at Manzanares, as if she
were sad? Oh, I saw it; and they wouldn’t let me get within whispering
distance of her afterwards, or I should have found out what it meant. I
had the idea that they were _particularly_ anxious to keep me away, and I
wondered if there were any new reason. I’m not surprised that Don Ramón is
worried. One can see that Señor Waring’s never been in love!”
“Oh, haven’t I?” exclaimed Dick; which, of course made matters worse; and
to mend them, he went on blundering. "What do _you_ know about the
symptoms?"
“Girls are born knowing things it takes men years to learn,” said Pilar.
It did not allay my anxiety that she should have noticed what I had
noticed. But I clung to the Cherub’s assurance, hoping, when we had set
out on our explorations, to meet her, to see her face light up with the
radiance I knew.
But there were no strangers save ourselves, and a few wandering Americans
under the palms and orange trees of the _paseo_ dedicated to the memory of
El Gran Capitán.
We wandered—Pilar keeping at my side, and leaving Dick to her father—from
gate to gate outside the Mosque-Cathedral which once made Cordoba the
Mecca of Europe; gazing up at the tremendous mass of honey-coloured
masonry rising like a vast fortress from its buttresses of stone;
lingering under the bell-tower of the Puerta del Perdon because Pilar
“felt as if something would happen there.” But nothing did happen; and we
went to face the blighting of renewed hopes in the Court of Oranges, whose
melancholy charm and sensuous perfume was sad as the song of a nightingale
when summer is dying.
She was not there; nor could we find her in the marble forest of the
pillared cathedral, though, while Dick and Pilar made up their differences
over the jewelled mosaics, I searched for her.
“I tell you, Ramón, there’s some satisfaction in feeling that you’re
looking at the best things the world’s got to show,” said Dick, almost in
my ear, “and there are lots of them in your country, especially in
Cordoba, though I suppose the Moors would weep to see it now. But you
don’t seem to be enjoying them, in spite of risking such a lot to come
where they are.”
I didn’t remind him that the risk I ran was for the one best thing in all
the world, which was only temporarily in my country, and that my
depression came because it was not at the moment visible. But Pilar did
not need reminding, and in the way of sweet women, tried to “keep my mind
occupied” by talking history and legend, confusing them deliciously, and
defending her stories of beautiful Egilona and fair Florinda by saying
that, anyhow, nobody cared whether they were true or not. Besides, what
_was_ history, since dull people were continually discovering that none of
the best bits had ever happened?
“I choose to believe in Florinda,” she cried, “and all the other beautiful
women who influenced kings, and made wars, and upset countries. Without
them and their love-stories, history would be like faded tapestry without
gold threads.”
So Dick ceased to argue, and in silence we left the gem-like perfection of
the third Mihrab, to wander once more through the wilderness of gleaming
columns that were now like over-arching trees, now like falling fountains.
No dusky vista out of those many changing ones framed the figure I longed
to see; and when we had left the cathedral and climbed to the gardens and
towers where stood once the Alcázar of Gothic and Moorish glories, it was
the same story of disappointment. Only the Americans we had seen in the
_paseo_ were there, more interested than I in such fragments as they could
catch of Pilar’s tales. Dungeons where Theodofredo had been blinded, and
Witica the wicked had paid for his crimes; vanished halls where Rodrigo
reigned and loved before the dark day beside the Guadalete lost the crown
for him and Christendom; what did they hold of interest since the garden
of lilacs and roses which covered their ruins was empty of one Presence?
When we had seen everything, I left my friends in the hall of the hotel
choosing curios from glass cases, and went out again in search of news
concerning the automobile which had passed in the morning.
Presumably it had attracted a crowd, yet no one seemed to know anything of
it until at last, just as I was giving up hope, I met an old man who had
seen a large grey motor-car at the railway station. A few minutes later, I
had solved the mystery of the Lecomte’s disappearance. It had arrived
early; its passengers had been conducted round Cordoba in the smallest
possible time by Carmona; it had then been driven to the station; and with
its late occupants had gone to Seville by the same train.
There might have been several motives for this move. The car might have
been partially disabled, not having been properly prepared at Manzanares;
or Carmona might have determined to thwart the destiny which so far had
kept me near him. I was inclined to accept the latter theory, and it did
not tend to promote my peace of mind.
I was glad to hear, however, that the train was not due at Seville until
late that evening. If we made an early start next day, it was not likely
that the situation could be much changed before I arrived, free of
obligations to the Duchess.
Of course, said Pilar, before I had time to ask, they would be ready to
start early, oh, very early. It would be beautiful to be in the country
before the sun had drunk up the dew on the grass, and withered the roses
of dawn in the clouds. There was no fear of cold now that we were in dear
Andalucía. Yes! we would have coffee at six, and leave at half-past.
I should not have dared suggest such a trial of moral courage, but I
accepted the sacrifice; so the roses of morning which Pilar loved still
bloomed in the garden of the sky, and trailed their reflection in the
Guadalquivir, as we rolled over the old bridge and past the white, Moorish
hills.
A morning in Paradise could scarcely be more beautiful; and the
pinky-purple blossoms of the _alamo_ shimmering in a rosy mist against
dark cypress trees, or mingling with the white lace of hawthorn was a
colour-symphony of Spring.
Dignified country houses no longer raised brown-tiled roofs from among
groves of olives; but an illimitable sea of waving downs lay bathed in the
amber light of Spain. Then, olive woods again, with a foam, of
field-flowers spraying their gnarled feet, hedges of sweetbrier, tangled
with tall, wild lilacs, and blossoming thorn. Beyond, high hills up which
the Gloria stormed boldly, frightening the horses of a troop of laughing
soldiers who rode without saddles; over stony roads, mere rough tracks
drawn through meadows, where bulls grazed, and bellowed at the automobile;
thus to a village which first showed itself like a white crown on a
hilltop, and proved to be inhabited by women and children of surpassing
beauty. Never were such eyes as those which looked from the faces in the
quick-gathering crowd; eyes like black wells with fallen stars in their
depths.
Peasant houses by the wayside had thatched roofs, grey and glistening as
silver plush; and outside ovens like huge cups turned upside down. The
fields were gay with flowers; the distance floated in waves of azure gauze
which touched the sky.
On we swept, as though to find the joining place, but found only Ecija,
the Town of the Seven Brigands, with its grand bridge and pearl-white
Moorish mills, in the yellow, swift-running Genil.
Kings had been lodged behind those brass-nailed doors and wrought-iron
balconies, the Cherub said; and malefactors famed in history and ballad
had swung from that tall gallows which caught the eye before Ecija’s eight
church towers. There had been famous fighting, too, by the river bank; but
now the place slept, dreaming of peace, and the whirr of the mill-wheels
sounded as comforting as the “chum-chum” of a motor that runs by night.
So we flashed out of the Province of Cordoba into the Province of Seville,
and tall, slender palms, rearing feathered heads among walnut trees and
oaks, were signposts pointing south. It was early in April, but the air
was the air of an English June, and I wondered to see men muffled in long
_capas_. “They do it to keep out the sun, as in the north to keep out the
wind,” explained Pilar; but she only laughed when Dick asked why they
shaved their donkeys’ backs, why they put red and yellow muzzles on their
donkeys’ mouths, why they always carried plaid “railway rugs” on their
beasts’ backs or their own, and why their trousers and leggings were made
in one piece?
Beyond the olives, black clumps of umbrella pines flung ink-blots against
the sky, and a purple carpet of budding heather was torn apart to let the
road pass through. It was ideal motor-country, and Dick recalled with
sneers the sixty horse-power man in Biarritz, who had feared the
experiment.
“The way is to _do_ what you want to do, and find out as you go along
whether it can be done or not,” he soliloquized.
I wondered if he were thinking of another difficult road, not to be
travelled by motors—a road where perhaps Don Cipriano already knew the
way.
Larks sprang skyward from beds of wild flowers as we fled by, little
fountains of music; tall cranes flew out of screening bushes beside bright
streams; and blurring the distance before us, a mist of rain floated like
a veil blown across the face of Spring.
In sight of Carmona’s splendid walls and ruined castle, the rain caught
us; and for Pilar’s sake we made the car cosey by fastening down the front
glass and filling in the space with drawn canvas curtains.
After this, our fleeting glimpses of pine and palm and olive were dimmed
as we bowled along a sandy road, yellow as beaten gold. Now and again a
patch of purple blossom burning through the mist sang a loud, exultant
note of spring and love; and pretty orange-pickers, in men’s jackets and
brown trousers, warbled of the same theme in that soft Andaluza which is
beyond all other languages of passion.
The colour, and the music, and the day went to my head. I knew that I was
young, and I wanted my chance of happiness—wanted it so much that I felt I
could kill a man who dared try to snatch it from me.