Men do not kill themselves for such things. Fools, or cowards, or children
may; but not men who are worthy the name. Yet there was no joy of life
left in me, as I went out of the Alcázar garden, having had my answer.
Love cannot die in an hour, and I loved Monica still, though I said that
she was not the girl to whom I had dedicated my soul in worship.
She had let me follow her, only to say at last: “I never wish to see you
again. I’m going to marry the Duke of Carmona.”
After all, she had proved herself a docile daughter. She had seen what the
house of a grandee of Spain can be like. She had seen the Blanca Laguna
pearl. Poor child of eighteen years, brought up to know poverty and to
loathe it; was I to let my love turn to hate because she was not an angel,
but a woman like others?
A despairing pity and a sense of hopeless loss weighed upon my spirit with
such heaviness as I had never known. Not only had I lost the girl I loved,
but there was no such girl; she was a dream, and I had waked up. That was
all; but it seemed the end of everything.
My errand in Spain was finished, or rather broken short. She did not want
me any more. The sooner I took myself out of her life and let her forget
what must now seem childish folly, the better. I might have known—she was
so young; and she had warned me of disaster when she said, “Don’t leave me
alone.”
I went to Olivero’s flat and changed my clothes; then to the hotel where
Ropes and the car were waiting. For the first time since we had come into
Spain, I drove, “like a demon,” Ropes’ surprised face said, though his
tongue was discreet; and the wild rush through the air was wine to thirsty
lips.
At the Cortijo de Santa Rufina they were all sitting in the _patio_ in
floods of moonlight, the great awning which gave shade by day, fully
rolled back.
“You see,” exclaimed Pilar, “we sat up for you. Well, how did it go off?”
I heard myself laughing. It did not feel a pleasant laugh, but I was glad
to think that it sounded like any other. “Oh, it went off exactly as I
might have expected,” I said, knowing that it was useless to hide my
humiliation, though I might hide my misery. “And consequently, my car and
I will also go off, to-morrow. As for Dick, he must do as he pleases; but
I advise him, now he’s here, to stay for the _Semana Santa_.”
“What do you mean?” asked Pilar, almost letting fall the guitar on which
she had been playing. “Has—has Lady Monica promised to go with
you—to-morrow?”
“Not at all,” said I. “But what she’s promised to another man makes it
better that I should go. She’s engaged to Carmona.”
“I don’t believe it,” cried Pilar.
“I shouldn’t, if anyone but herself had told me.”
“She said it?”
“In exactly those words. She said too, that she didn’t want to see me
again.”
“Oh—oh!” breathed Pilar. “Thank _Heaven_ for that. You frightened me
horribly—just for a moment.”