“I should like to send a note,” I said, “but not to the Duke.”
Having got so far, I took a roll of bank-notes from my pocket, as we
strolled slowly on together. A young woman so anxious to convey an
impression of her own importance, must have ambitions beyond her place in
life.
The dark face sparkled at sight of the money, and tactfully I explained
that my principal interest centred in a young guest of the Duchess’s. Any
person who could take word from me to her, unknown to others, would be
well rewarded. I should not think five hundred pesetas too much, to give
for such a service.
A hint was enough. In an instant the girl became a woman of business and a
mistress of intrigue. She would not, she said, dare attempt to deliver a
note. It would be simpler, less dangerous for all concerned, to be at work
in a corridor through which the English señorita must pass; to murmur a
few words which would attract her attention; to receive a verbal message
in return; and to bring it to me when she could—not to-day; that would be
impossible; but to-morrow evening about nine, at which time she had
already permission to go out.
Should I trust her? Her face was one to inspire a man’s admiration rather
than trust, but I had no alternative. If I surrendered this chance, I
should hardly find another as promising; and as I must depend upon someone
in Carmona’s house, why not upon this woman? The bribe I offered was
tempting enough to keep her true, if anything could.
I hesitated no more than a moment in accepting her amendment of my
proposal, since she assured me it was impossible to make an appointment
sooner. And the message I sent Monica was cautiously worded.
The friends who had seen her last in the cathedral of Seville were anxious
to see her again, and begged that she would arrange to meet them as soon
as possible, to carry out the plan which had been interrupted.
The girl repeated these words after me, promised to remember them and give
me the answer to-morrow night at nine, in case any message were entrusted
to her. We were not to meet at the same place, however, but on the
Alhambra Hill, in the road leading up from the “Wasinton” (as she called
the hotel) to the Carmen de Mata Moros. She had a brother living not far
from there, she said, whom she expected to visit the following evening. I
offered half the money in advance as an incentive to loyalty, and it was
accepted with dignity. Then, when we were parting, I asked if one could
see into the palace _patio_ from the Alhambra, which towered above us on
the height.
“From the middle window of the Sala de Ambajadores the señor will find
himself able to see very well,” she answered. “And there is still another
_patio_, into which there is a better view from the gardens of the
Generalife. Certainly the gardens are very high and far; but if the señor
has a spy-glass of some sort? And if he chooses I can try to tell the
young lady that he will be first in one place, then in the other, hoping
for a sight of her. Let us say, in the afternoon between four and six at
the Alhambra; after that, at the Generalife, till the sun is gone.”
This neat plan was worth an extra twenty-five peseta note, and I gave it.
Afterwards, having no other personal affairs to distract my attention, I
wandered through the streets of Granada and into the chill cathedral
before going up to make acquaintance with the Carmen de Mata Moros.
When I had seen the villa, with its enchanting terraced garden, hanging on
the hillside high above the Vega, a wild hope blazed within me that I
might snatch Monica, persuade the English Consul to marry us, and keep her
here for the honeymoon, flaunting my happiness in Carmona’s face. Of
course the idea was fantastic, but it gave me a few moments of happiness.
I lunched in the garden under the thick shade of _nisperos_ trees, and
before the time agreed upon I started to walk to the Alhambra.
Not for worlds would I have taken a guide to show the way. All my life,
since the days when my mother told me legends of treasure hidden and
Moorish warriors enchanted, the Alhambra had been a fairy dream to me.
There was no one in the world, save only Monica, whose company I would
have craved for this expedition. Other people’s thoughts and impressions
of the place might be better than mine, but I did not want to hear them; I
wanted only my own.
Under the huge leaning elms, which people who trust guide-books attribute
to Wellington, I wandered until I came to a great red tower, with a
horseshoe arch for entrance. There on the keystone was the carved hand;
beyond, over the arch within, the key; and remembering the legend that
never would disaster come until the Hand had grasped the Key, I knew that
this must be the Gate of Justice.
Now, a spell fell upon me. It was as if the Hand had come down to touch me
on the shoulder, and give the Key to hidden wonders, which only I might be
allowed to see. That was the fiction with which I pleased myself; for he
who comes to the most famous of places is as truly a discoverer as he who
finds a new world. No matter how much he has read, how many faithful
photographs seen, he must discover everything anew, since it is certain
that nowhere will he find anything more than he has within himself. The
picture he sees will fit the frame his mind can give, and no one ever has,
no one ever will, see there exactly what he sees. If a man’s mind cannot
create a beautiful frame, then the picture must have but a poor effect for
him, and he will go away belittling it.
Now, I believed that I had been making a fine jewelled frame for this
picture of the Alhambra, and I hoped that I deserved the Key which the
Hand had lent.
Inside the gateway, when I had climbed a winding lane, I found myself in
the great Place of the Cisterns, which, with the vast incongruous palace
half finished by Charles the Fifth, I recognized from many pictures; but
not yet would I look down over Granada and the Vega. I would wait until I
could stand at a window in the Hall of the Ambassadors and see what I had
been promised. So, without a glance over the parapet, I walked on to an
open door, where stood two or three men in gold-laced hats. One moved
resignedly forward to act as guide, but a word and a piece of silver
convinced him that I was a person who might be trusted alone, though I
lacked a student’s ticket.
I passed through the room devoted to officialdom, and then—the time had
come to use the key, for I was already in fairyland; the covers of the
“Arabian Nights” had closed on me, and shut me in between the pages.
Physically I was not alone; for there were faded and strident tourists in
the marble-paved court of the Alberca, whom I fain would have had stopped
outside and put into appropriate costume for fairyland; but spiritually I
had the place to myself.
The little glittering fish, like tropical flowers under green glass,
flashed towards me through the beryl water, just as ancestor fish had
flashed when jewelled hands of harem beauties crumbled cake into the
gleaming tank. My mother had told me a legend, that fair favourites of
banished sultans prayed to return after death to the Alhambra, in the
bronze and gold, rose and purple forms of these fish of the Alberca; and
now I half believed the story. Where—since Mahomet grants no heaven to
women—could they be happier than here? Floating ever under their roof of
emerald, did they think themselves more fortunate than their husbands,
lovers, and brothers permitted to rest within the Alhambra walls in the
guise of martens wailing shrilly for days that might not come again?
Dreaming, I passed into the Court of Lions, where I and the twelve quaint,
stone guardians of the place stared at one another across a few feet of
marble pavement that measured centuries. Each prim beast, beautiful
because of his crude hideousness differing from his fellows; each with a
different story to tell if he would. Which one remembered that night when
the brave Abencerrages faced death, there in the hall to the right, where
the fountain kept ominous stains of brown? Which had the seeing eye in
these fallen times, to watch when the ghost of those noble Moors passed by
silent and sad in the moonlight? Upon which had blood-drops spattered when
the boy princes died for jealous Fatima’s pleasure? Which had known the
touch of Morayma’s little hand or lovely Galiana’s?
I asked the questions; yet the deep answering silence of the court, and of
all this hidden, secret, fairy palace seemed to say so much that it was
not like silence, but reserve.
“The Alhambra is music and colour and knowledge,” I said to the lions.
“When I am gone I shall shut my eyes and hear as well as see it; hear the
magic music of the silence, played on silver lutes of Moors, and tinkling
fountains, a siren’s song to draw me back again; and I shall know and feel
things which I’ve never been able to think out quite clearly before.”
Would Monica come here? I wondered. No face more lovely than hers had ever
looked down from those latticed windows supported by pillars delicate as a
child’s white arm. If I could but see her face now! Not seeing it, I knew
that no place, however beautiful, could be perfect for me. Shadows of
sorrow, of separation, would stand out the blacker against the sunlit,
jewelled walls of the fairy palace; and even happiness must sing in minor
notes here, lest it strike out a discord in the tragic poem of the
Alhambra. No wonder, in losing their crown jewel, the Moors lost hope, and
with it all the art and science which had set them far above their
Christian rivals! No wonder they plunged, despairing, into the deserts
they had left, mingling among savage races as some bright spring mingles
with a dark subterranean river, never to glitter in the light again.
But none of my day dreams cheated me into losing count of time.
If my messenger were true, soon Monica would be in one of the _patios_ of
Carmona’s palace, looking up at the Alhambra towers. “The middle window as
you go into the Hall of the Ambassadors,” I repeated, and found my way
back through the court of the Alberca; for you do not need to know the
Alhambra to find your way from _sala_ to _sala_, seen a hundred times in
imagination.
So beautiful had I guessed that room above all others, that I had not
expected to be surprised; yet I was surprised, and oddly excited, for
supreme beauty is always exciting to the Latin mind. A vast bower of
jewels, and old point-lace embroidered with tarnished gold threads and
yellowing pearls, it seemed; its portals lace-curtained too; rich hanging
folds of lace and fringe, like the lifted drapery of a sultan’s tent,
supported on delicate poles of polished ivory.
Behind me was the beryl block of the fish-pond, set in silver instead of
marble by the sunshine in the court. Before me, across the pink-jewelled
dusk of the Sala de los Ambajadores, a blue and green picture of sky and
mountains was framed by lace and precious stones.
I walked to the middle window and looked sheer down over tall tree-tops to
the valley of the Darro, where the roofs of the Albaicín clustered
together, softly grey and glistening as the ruffled plumage of nestling
birds.
Far away to the left lay the Vega, shimmering under a mist of heat, which
gave the look of a crystal sea engulfing the plain, trees and scattered
villages gleaming through the transparent flood. Straight before my eyes,
on the cactus-clothed shoulder of a hill opposite the tower, glittered a
splash of whitewash dotted with black holes, which were the doors and
windows of gypsy caverns. And above me, to the right on a higher hillside,
rose the towers and miradores of that ancient “summer palace of delights,”
the Generalife.
One sweeping glance gave me these details; then, adjusting the field-glass
I had brought, I fixed my attention on a house near the Albaicín, which I
easily identified as Carmona’s palace.
Gazing down from such a height, I had a bird’s-eye view of double _patios_
thick with clustering shrubs, orange trees, and cypresses. The powerful
glasses brought out clearly the delicate marble pillars supporting the
Moorish archways of the upper gallery in one of these _patios_; but the
other was shrouded for me by a group of cypresses.
For a long time I waited—hours it seemed; but no one moved along the
gallery or appeared in the half-shuttered windows that looked down into
the court; and at last I decided to try the gardens of the Generalife,
which I had been told commanded the second _patio_.
Once, said legend, a prince had been secluded by his father in those
gardens and those towers, lest he see the face of a woman, and learn
sorrow through love; nevertheless, he had found out the great secret, and
had had news of the most beautiful lady in the world. I hoped, as I walked
along the avenue of cypresses, that I might be as fortunate; and in the
gardens all things spoke of love. There, under the giant cypress, the
handsome Abencerrage had come to keep the tryst which cost his head, and
thirty-five others as noble. There, at the top of that shaded flight of
stone steps, whose balustrades were jewelled with running water, Prince
Ahmed had sat to play his lute. From that arcaded balcony Zorayda had
looked when love was young, and Boabdil still the lover. In the mirrors of
the water-_patio_ Galiana had bent to her own image and asked, “Am I
worthy to be loved?”
Out of the tangle of red and white roses, bunched in with golden oranges
and scented blooms mingling together in one huge bouquet, I looked to find
my love. It was true, I could see clearly now into the cypress _patio_;
and suddenly a white figure came out from a window upon the gallery. The
glass at my eye, I thought I recognized Monica’s slender girlishness; but
a moment later a larger form appeared. The two women stood together
looking up, Lady Vale-Avon pointing towards the towers of the Alhambra or
the Generalife.
Was it possible she saw me? Yet no, she could not without glasses. But if
Monica had indeed been told where I would be at a certain time, could she
not have contrived some means to elude her mother and come to the balcony
alone?
Long after the two vanished I lingered; waited until sunset; waited until
the sky was flooded with rose and gold, and towers and hills were purple
in a violet mist. But Monica did not come again.
If she had not been given the message, what guarantee had I that she would
receive the other far more important?
It was in a fever of uncertainty that I must spend the next
four-and-twenty hours.