“All right. Come on. I know what you feel. But what about that old
reprobate upstairs?”
“I’ll wait for you here while you take up some food and leave it in the
room. We can’t waste time in Granada on his account. I’ll tell my story,
and you can tell yours to the police in Madrid, after I—after I’ve done
what I’m going there to do.”
“How long a drive is it?” Dick asked resignedly.
“It’s about two hundred and seventy miles. If we can start by one or two,
bar accidents we ought to be in Madrid by noon.”
“The royal bull-fight’s to-morrow,” answered Dick. “Although the wedding’s
next day, and the invitations have been out a fortnight, Carmona and Lady
Monica are bound to be there, as it’s a royal invitation show; that means
a command.”
“Very well,” said I. “Since it may be as difficult to reach her in Madrid
as in Seville and Granada, I shall wait outside the entrance to the
bull-ring, and as she’s about to go in, she shall see me and hear the
whole truth. Don’t look as if you thought it would do no good, Dick; if
she’s promised to marry Carmona in spite of all, it’s because he has made
her think he can ruin me if she refuses. Pilar’s instinct is right, I
know; and now for the first time I understand why Carmona didn’t denounce
me to the police as Casa Triana, when Monica refused to keep her
engagement with him, as I’m sure she did. No doubt he told her lies—that I
could be imprisoned—for years, perhaps. And his wounded hand—what an
opportunity for him! Ah! he wouldn’t waste it. He’d make her believe I
stabbed him in the cathedral that night. How plausible! And as he’s been
very ill, can’t you imagine what her fears for me must have been? Dick, I
regard her coming marriage as a proof of love, not of indifference.”
“I’m ready to agree with you,” said Dick. “But you’re risking your life to
prove it.”
“Nonsense,” I answered. “The thought that I’m free, that I’m going to her,
and that at last I have Carmona in my hand, will give me strength enough
to get through.”
Dick raised his eyebrows, but did not answer. He was collecting bread and
meat on a plate, to leave for the man upstairs.
Five minutes later we were out of the house and in the street. In front of
the miller’s premises Ropes was walking up and down. He did not say much
when he saw that Dick had a companion; but as he wrung the hand I held out
to him, I heard him breathing hard, and he swore under his breath when he
saw my face by the light of a street lamp.
It was the look on his which made me realize, as Dick’s persuasions had
not, that I must delay long enough to be made again into some semblance of
a sane man. An hour more before getting on the road would not endanger
success, though it would try my patience. A quarter of a mile’s walk to
the garage was a sharper test of my strength than I would confess; but
when Ropes had roused the watchman, filled the good old Gloria with
petrol, and started her up the hill, the rush of pure night air gave me
life.
At the hotel, we walked in without waking the dozing _concièrge_. Dick
made me free of his things; and when, between us, we had finished my
toilet, he admitted that I was not as appalling an object as he had
thought. He changed his wet clothes, left a note for the landlord, and it
was not yet two o’clock when we started, Ropes driving, Dick with me in
the tonneau.
“To Madrid, top speed, quickest way,” was the word; and I hoped for a
non-stop run, or as near it as possible.
The quickest way was by Jaen, a road which none of us knew, and the
starlit sky was obscured by dark clouds which heralded a summer
thunder-storm. As Ropes steered across the Vega towards that gap in the
mountains which is the door of the north, there came a waterspout of rain
on the roof. Thunder drowned the purr of the motor, and a flash of
lightning every other moment dimmed the flying circle of our acetylenes.
There had been rain more than once of late, and this deluge made the road,
already bad, soft and greasy as an outworn sponge. The Gloria waltzed and
slipped in a mass of brown porridge, but Ropes knew that we were to drive
against time, and, throwing caution to the wind, tore through the
treacherous mud as if to win the cup in a great race.
We flung Granada behind us, dashing in among the foothills of the
mountains, mounting a slippery defile, with the rain like whips lashing
our faces. Orchards flashed by; there was a rock tunnel, where the lights
shone fiercely on rough-hewn stone, and the thrum of the motor became a
roar.
Out again, and still up, the beams from our lamps shooting across
vineyards, plantations of figs and pomegranates, and striking silver from
the curves of the Guadalbullon River. A glimpse of an old castle
commanding a dark gorge, and we were at Jaen; then, presently, the road
became familiar, for we had travelled it before. At this very corner we
had stopped to ask the way of men who carried strange implements like
fire-extinguishers, for this was Bailen; but now, instead of receiving our
first glimpse of Andalucía, we were leaving it behind.
Eighty miles out of two hundred and seventy we had come, though the pace
had not been good. Still the rain was ceasing, and we could make up for
lost time, as country traffic had not begun yet.
La Carolina, Santa Elena; the road was mounting for the well-remembered
defile of Despeñaperros. Hoot! went the siren, screaming along the face of
tremendous cliffs, and a louder shriek rang as if an echo. A line of fire
down in the gorge meant the train from Madrid to Seville. It glittered
like a string of stars drawn across a spider’s-web viaduct, then vanished
into a tunnel, while we swept on towards the plains of La Mancha, Ropes
crouched like a goblin over his wheel.
Rain again, blurring villages, and sweeping through the stone streets of a
town: fields once more, and at last Manzanares. There Dick insisted that
we should stop for food, lest strength fail me when I should need it most;
but I could not bear to go back to the _fonda_ I knew, to see the pretty
girls there look at my pale face with shocked eyes, perhaps to have them
question me about the “white and gold angel.”
It was eight o’clock when we got away from the café, where we had spent
some twenty minutes; and the road was no longer clear. We were obliged to
moderate our speed, and lost more time than we could afford getting on to
Aranjuez.
“Do your best now, Ropes,” I was saying, when the Gloria—for once
perverse—burst a tyre with a loud explosion. Ropes threw me a rueful look.
“I’d hoped to get through without trouble, sir,” he said, “but the car’s
lain up for more than five weeks, and there was no time last night to look
her over.”
“You’ve done splendidly,” I assured him. “I’ll get out with Mr. Waring and
stretch my legs.”
I was glad to walk, and still more glad to feel that instead of being
exhausted as Dick had prophesied, strength seemed coming back. As we
strolled up and down, so sure was I of Dick’s sympathy that I began to
talk about my hopes and fears. He did not disappoint me, but once or twice
he answered absent-mindedly, with a far-off look in his eyes, and
suddenly, with a pang of remorse, I remembered that I had not once
referred to the progress of his love affairs. My own had preoccupied me to
the exclusion of everything outside, and I had spoken of Pilar’s only in
connection with Monica.
Anathematizing myself aloud as an ungrateful and ungracious brute, I asked
if Pilar had made up her mind.
“You needn’t blame yourself,” he said. “All this time she’s kept me on
tenter-hooks, because, though she admitted liking me, she couldn’t
reconcile her heart with her conscience. I got the dear old Cherub’s
blessing, and flaunted it in her face; but that wasn’t enough. I also
argued that it was her duty to marry me and try to make me as good as
herself, but she seemed to think it might work out the other way. Then you
disappeared, and the last word she said was that if I found you, she’d
take it as a sign that San Cristóbal wanted the match; seems he’s a
matchmaking saint, when he’s in Spain, as well as a motoring one. So, you
see, she’ll have to keep her promise now; and I’ll owe my happiness to
you.”
“I haven’t come back to life in vain, then,” I said. “It will be a good
moment for me, whatever happens, when I see my little sister Pilar again.”
“She’ll be at the royal bull-fight,” Dick sighed.
“I thought she hated bull-fights—for Vivillo’s sake.”
“It’s for Vivillo’s sake she’s going. She’s moved heaven and earth to get
invitations.”
“And she’s succeeded.”
“Thereby hangs a tale. But I’m not going to bother you with it.”