“It’s all right,” were his first words. “I felt my luck wouldn’t desert me. Who do you suppose”—and he turned to Pilar, who had come on with him—“was the first man I ran across? No other than Don Esteban Villaroya.”
Pilar looked a little frightened. “But he’s a friend of the Duke’s. Won’t that make it awkward?”
“No; all the better. I told him Cristóbal and my daughter and I had motored from Burgos with an American friend, an important writer for the papers, who was going to pay us a visit. Not an untrue word to trouble my confessor with. Don Esteban may or may not mention our meeting to Carmona when he dines with him this evening.”
“Dines with him? Oh, I hope that won’t make mischief.”
“It won’t. Carmona arrived late last night, with his mother and guests. It seems preparations have been going on in the house for the past fortnight; and the first thing Carmona and his mother did was to send out half a dozen invitations for dinner this evening. Afterwards, he managed, probably through royal influence, to get permission from the Governor to take the party into the Alcázar by moonlight, and he’s going to have coloured illuminations, music, and Spanish dances given by professionals in the costumes of different provinces. A grand idea, Don Esteban thinks.”
“But why is he doing it?” asked Pilar, thoughtfully. “María purísima! It isn’t as if he were an impulsive or hospitable man, fond of getting up impromptu entertainments. This is done in a hurry. What can be his object? for he always has an object.”
“To amuse Lady Monica, who’s not pleased with him so far,” explained the Cherub. “And as he’s a good Catholic, at least in appearance, to-night or the night after will be his last chance to entertain till _Semana Santa_ is over.”
“Somehow, I don’t feel that’s reason enough,” said Pilar, looking so troubled that I felt new stirrings of anxiety, and must have shown it; for Pilar exclaimed that she was a “little beast” to worry me.
“You haven’t worried me,” I protested. “Still, I think I’ll go to that entertainment at the Alcázar.”
Pilar and her father stared. “I see what you mean,” said the girl. “You hope to walk in and meet Lady Monica. But you can’t, because the Alcázar’s closed to the public after sunset. It will only be open for the Duke as a favour, because he’s rich and important, and care will be taken that no outsider slips in.”
“If there should be one more guitarist than he hired, do you think it would be noticed?” I asked, smiling.
Pilar clapped her hands. “You’re a true lover, Don Ramón,” she exclaimed. “_Ay de mi!_ Nobody will ever love a little dark thing like myself, as Lady Monica is loved. I must be satisfied with the affections of my relations, and a few others, I suppose.” Great eyes lifted sadly ceiling-ward as she spoke, then cast down with distracting play of long curled lashes. Spanish after all to her finger-tips, this María del Pilar Inés, despite her Irish quickness. Poor Dick!
“You believe I could manage it, then?”
“I believe you _will_. Señor Waring has told me about the masked ball, and how you played Romeo to somebody’s Juliet.”
“The difficulty will be to get hold of the _impresario_.”
Pilar looked at her watch. “They’ll know at the Alcázar who’s been engaged. There’s an hour and a half yet before closing time.”
“What if you and I take a stroll through?” suggested Dick.
“We’ll all take a stroll through,” said Pilar, “and papa shall find out. You know, he can always make everybody tell him anything in five minutes. Even Cristóbal and I have never been able to keep a secret from him. If I’d planned to elope, he would only have to whisper and smile, for me to tell all, even if it meant my going into a convent directly after.”
“Yes, we must go to the Alcázar now, or it will be too late,” said the Cherub, with an indulgent twinkle at his spoiled daughter.
The car took us to the gate of the Alcázar, a gate of that unsuggestive Moorish simplicity which purposely hid all splendours of decoration from any save favoured eyes. The guardian knew and evidently respected Colonel O’Donnel; but with apologies which comprehended the whole party, he regretted that he could not let us in. The King was to arrive in a few days, returning from his yachting trip to the Canaries, and would live in the Alcázar which was being got ready for him. From now until the day after his departure, the Alcázar was to be closed to the public.
This was just, and as it should be, admitted the Cherub; but we were not the public. We were special ones, even as special as the Duke of Carmona who would entertain his friends there that evening. Surely the guardian must know that the O’Donnel family was on terms of friendship with the Governor of the Alcázar, who would suffer severe pains of the heart if he heard that such visitors had been turned away. Thus the good Cherub continued to whisper. And whether or no coin changed hands I cannot tell; but certain it is that in less than the five minutes allowed by Pilar for the working of her father’s fascinations, we were inside the forbidden precincts, accompanied by a lamb-like attendant.
It was from him that we must learn what we wished to know; but it would be unwise to betray a premature thirst for information on any subject save the history or beauties of the Alcázar. Asking a question now and then of our guide, we wandered from _patio_ to _patio_, from room to room of that wonderful royal dwelling once called “the house of Cæsar.” Many a rude shock and vicissitude had it sustained when Goths fought for it with Romans, when Moors seized it from Christians, when Christians won it back, and conducted themselves within its jewelled walls in ways unworthy of their faith and boasted chivalry, yet the beauties which Pedro the Cruel restored in admiring imitation of the Alhambra, glowed still with undimmed splendour, in the sunshine of this twentieth century afternoon.
If I had not been preoccupied by my own private and extremely modern anxieties, I should have let imagination work the spell it longed to work, and make of me some humble character gliding shadow-like, but ever observant, through tale after tale of the “Arabian Nights.” In just such a palace as this had the Seven Calenders lost each an eye; behind any one of these fretted arches might one come upon a king, half man, half jet-black marble. The most captious of genies could have found no fault with the Hall of the Ambassadors save the absence of the roc’s egg; and despite my impatience the storied enchantment of the place soon had me in its grip.
Scheherezade, I said to myself, could have invented no tales to surpass in thrilling interest the scenes which had been enacted here. The drama of widowed Egilona and her handsome Moorish prince, ruined by her love; the tragedy of Abu Said, done to death by Pedro for the sake of his “fair ruby, great as a racket ball,” and the store of gems for which men still search secretly in hidden nooks of the Alcázar; the murder of the young Master of Santiago, who came to Pedro as an honoured guest; the love story of Maria de Padilla, whose spirit, the guardian whispered, could be seen to this day flitting in moonlight and shadow along her favourite garden walks, or trailing white robes through rooms which had been hers.
“Perhaps, as the moon is full, Maria will appear to-night in the garden to the Duke of Carmona and his guests,” said Pilar; and I knew from this preface that our probation was at an end.
The attendant laughed. “Perhaps,” he replied; “but I think there will be too much noise to please her. The Duke has engaged a troupe of dancers and guitarists to entertain his friends.”
“No doubt King Don Pedro used to amuse his in the same way,” remarked the Cherub, “employing the forerunners of Ramiro Olivero and his school maybe.”
“It is Ramiro Olivero who performs to-night,” said the attendant, playing into our hands.
“Of course! He is the favoured one in such affairs,” assented the Cherub. “It ought to be a pretty entertainment, and interesting to the Duke’s English guests. It will be somewhere in the gardens?”
“In the lower garden of the Moorish kiosk,” was the unsuspecting reply.
Pilar looked at me, and her eyes said, “The key you wanted is in your hand.”
XXVII
MOONLIGHT IN THE GARDEN
When the Cherub dies and is gathered to his Irish and Spanish fathers (far distant be the day!) he will not know a happy moment in Paradise unless he is doing something ingenuously kind for somebody. It is my conviction that he will have to be made a guardian angel; and I mentioned this theory to him as he took me to the house of Ramiro Olivero, ex-bull-fighter, present professor of Spanish dancing.
The others were waiting in the car, as, according to the Cherub’s plan of campaign, he and I were to visit Olivero alone.
We climbed many stairs to the flat where the celebrated man lives and conducts his school for dancing. He it was who came to the door, and it was a sight worth seeing to watch his somewhat hard, middle-aged features relax in response to cherubic murmurings.