A. M. Williamson

“ 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. ”

“ After the Peace with Idleness, came the motor mania, and I thought of nothing else for a time. But when you have run your car for months, motoring for its own sake ceases to be all in all. You ask yourself what country you would like best to visit with the machine you love.
Pride kept me from answering that question with the name of “Spain”; but it was because Biarritz is at the door of Spain that I had just invited Dick Waring—the best of friends, the most delightful of Americans, who fought side by side with me, for fun, in China—to drive there in my Gloria car. ”

“ Pilar said. “Don't you know that? But then, you haven't been in Spain long—except in your thoughts. That's expected; just as a girl must politely kiss her hand to a bull-fighter if he kisses his to her; for if she doesn't, she puts the evil-eye upon him; and like as not he's gored the next time he goes into the arena. Oh, I love the coplas! And wasn't that woman singing in good Spanish? Even the common people speak well here, for Valladolid and Toledo Spanish is the best in Spain.” ”

“ Each girl we passed wore a bright flower shining star-like through the black cloud of her hair. The men had discarded the fur-trimmed Louis XI caps for the broad-brimmed, grey sombreros de Cordoba, and the horses or mules were harnessed with gay splashes of red and blue colour, and bobbing tassels.
We had talked of Linares, the lead-mining town, as a halting-place for the night, as we were pledged not to track down the Lecomte; and on the outskirts of Bailen, as twilight fell, the Gloria was brought to a sudden stop in the midst of a pulsating crowd, that we might ask the way. ”

“ At Santa Elena we were in a Spain I had not seen. At La Carolina we burst into a world fair and fertile as the Garden of Eden; and I remembered the Moorish legend that Heaven is built on the blue that hangs over Andalucía.
Hedges of aloe brandished zincen swords and darts; cacti sprawled and leered along the roadside; set in the vivid green of ripening grain, olive groves seemed carved from jade; or the bare rosy shoulders of sloping hillsides turned by contrast their pale tints to tarnished silver. Vines with young gold leaves trailed the purple earth; avenues of acacias dripped perfumes ”

“ Dark-browed boys played toreros to our car as bull, their coats muletas, sticks their banderillas, yelling and springing lithely aside as the enemy rushed on them. Girls, handsome as Carmen, flung us flowers, staring boldly eye to eye; and this was my welcome to the place near which the Casa Trianas had once lived and thought themselves great!
Almost could I have seen the towers of the old house—now the property of the King—as we passed into open country again; but I did not speak, nor did the others, though the thought in my mind must have been in Pilar's and Colonel O'Donnel's. ”

“ We lunched on extremely Spanish food at a fonda opposite the Escurial; and when the time came for sightseeing—a time for us, but not for the public—the Duke began by marshalling us all, except the weary Duchess and the lazy Cherub, through the great door guarded by Saint Lawrence. Once within, we saw the treasures, as a bird in flight sees the beauties of a town over which he swoops; but we did see them, and once I had three words and one look from Monica, before it occurred to Lady Vale-Avon to link an arm in her daughter's, in a sudden overflow of maternal affection. ”

“ You don't see such a bull in ten thousand,” men said to each other, as Vivillo flung the dead horse on the sand, tumbling the picador over the barrera into the callijon, and raced off gamely to a third duel.
When he had killed three horses (knowing no distinction between their innocence and man's cruelty, after his shoulders had felt the lance) he was apparently as fresh as when he left the toril. At this stage of the death drama most bulls would be breathing hard; but though the brown velvet of Vivillo's neck was stained dark crimson, neither fatigue nor pain made his strong heart labour. ”

“ Beautiful faces peered from behind rusty bars, with eyes to tempt any man to “eat iron,” as the saying is. Dark men with sun-warmed eyes, and black heads wrapped in handkerchiefs of scarlet silk, stared curiously at Pilar's veil; and when we emerged from the stone-and-plaster labyrinth, into a wider space where the hotel stands like an ancient palace, we were swamped by the laughing crowd which had formed into a trotting procession behind us.
Just as the marble whiteness of the patio cooled our eyes, down the stairs came those with whom my thoughts had raced ahead; the Duchess of Carmona ”

“ I love the poor bulls and horses so much, it would make me sad to see them die. Though, if I were a bull, I would myself choose a brave death in the arena, after a life of five glorious years, rather than the slaughter-house, or a weary existence of labour till old age or overstrain finished me. But I drive in the paseo on the bull-fight days, and for the feria. Ay de mi! A girl in Spain has few other chances to make herself pretty for the world to see, unless she lives in Madrid; and if it were not for the bull-fights, I suppose many girls would never get husbands. ”

“ Down it flashed, while the music stopped as if awed into silence, and the alguazil spurred his stallion across the arena to fling into the montera of el Buñolero, janitor of the bull cells, the key he had received.
“Vivillo is fifth bull,” I said to myself, repeating Dick's words; and there, too, was his name on the programme of the fight. Pilar's favourite had still a little time to draw the breath of life, stamping in the gloom of his narrow toril. ”

“ But the banderillas were planted at last, and the blood on Vivillo's brown shoulders lay like a crimson cloak. The great round of applause was as much for the bull as for the banderillero; and every face in the audience was tense with excitement as the horn sounded for the death scene. With such a king of the arena anything might happen. It was well that a master like Fuentes was the espada who would deal with him, or he might deal with the espada. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was a spin of but fifty miles from Madrid to the olive plantations (the first I'd seen in Spain) near Toledo; but the road surface was not of velvet; and we had often to slow down for animals who hated, because they did not understand, that most faithful and loyal of beasts, the automobile. Therefore it was close upon one o'clock when the noble old town rose in wild majesty before us on its granite, horseshoe hill, girdled by the dark gold bed of the Tagus. ”

“ Another instant, and the population of Manzanares was answering to the thrum of our motor, as soldiers to the call of the drum. From somewhere, their saints alone knew where, an army of children poured into the long straight street, and as we slowed to avoid wholesale murder, they took advantage of our consideration to swarm up the car like ants. They ran shouting beside us, climbed on to the steps, hung on behind, fighting so ruthlessly for choice positions that they all but fell under the wheels. One would not have supposed there could be other children left in Spain. ”

“ For Fuentes, best espada left in Spain, bravest fighter of bulls according to the classic methods, was to give Vivillo the death stroke, when picadores and banderilleros had done with him.
The yells of the vast multitude in an instant changed the bull's proud astonishment to fury. He seemed to realize that this new world, so different from the old sweet, green one, was a world of enemies, every soul against him, and he was ready to fight them all to the death. ”

“ That bouquet! if it should hold the threatened bomb? This was the moment for such an attempt at wrecking the royal box, for the King was a member of the next brotherhood that must pass; and soon he would be leaving his sister and friends to walk with it, perhaps not returning to his box that day.
The passing of light is no more swift than was the flight of these thoughts; and without waiting to calculate the cost to myself, thinking only of the King and of the girl I loved, I instantly thrust both hands between the curtains, following the flowers as they were passed in. ”

“ Far away, the mountains, rolling along the wide horizon, glimmered blue, rose, ochre, and white, like coloured marble or a Moorish mosaic. Again we flashed past a troglodyte village in a hillside; crossed a magnificent bridge, which even Dick approved; wound through a labyrinth of strange streets like the streets in a nightmare, and roads to match; smelt mingled perfumes of incense, burning braziers, cigarettes, and garlic (the true and intimate smell of country Spain) ; saw Dueñas, where fair Isabel la Católica met Ferdinand in the making of the most romantic of royal courtships ”

“ There it was, stuck in a drift like a frozen wave; and there was Carmona himself up to his knees in diamond dust, gloomily superintending his chauffeur who packed snow into the radiator to cool the overheated motor.
All the extra power of the Lecomte gave no advantage over the Gloria here. Fate had set the stage for us, and we must obey the cue. No ingenuity of Pilar's could hide us in the wings any longer, and we must play our parts as Destiny prompted. ”

“ As before, the news of our presence seemed to flash through the air and bring, in the same mysterious way, an audience out of empty space. Pilar said that the people who came were in reality wild birds, seen by our sophisticated eyes in the form of human beings; and as if they had been wild birds, we coaxed them, till they trusted us and fed with us, drinking from our wineskin the blood of the Spanish grape, almost innocent of alcohol. ”

“ The voice of a young girl, washing white and blue clothing in a trough of running water, sped us upon our journey. Her head was bound in a scarlet handkerchief; and smiling at us while she pounded the linen, she sang a strange song, half chant, with that wild Eastern lilt which has been handed down from the Moors to the sons and daughters of Spain.
“She's improvising a copla!” exclaimed Pilar. “Listen; it's for you, brother Cristóbal.” ”

“ In sight of the conspicuous church tower at Utrera—ancient home of outlaws—we came upon a dusty white line diverging to Ecija. Pausing to question a road-mender, I remembered Colonel O'Donnel's story of the Seven Men of Ecija, and the curious bond between them and the Dukes of Carmona. But what brought the tale to my mind—unless it was the name of Ecija on the road-map and signpost, or the fact that we were now in the real heart of brigand-land—I could not have told. ”

“ I saw a haggard company of Jews marching into “Tarshish,” scarred and bleeding from the persecutions of Nebuchadnezzar who had flung them from Jerusalem. I saw Moorish men fighting to take Toledo—the “Lookout,” “the Light of the World,” and fighting again to save it for themselves.
There, in the towering Alcázar, had Rodrigo betrayed his beautiful queen, Egilona, for the still more beautiful Florinda, daughter of Julian, Espatorios of Spain; at least, so legend said, mingling the romantic music of its ballads inextricably with the deep organ notes of history. ”

“ To think, if we had known at Jerez that Granada was the lodestar, we could have reached Ronda in a run of four hours day before yesterday! But it was useless to repine, and fate had given us Ronda.
By the time we had passed through the straggling village of Campillos the moon was up, a great white, incandescent globe of light, so brilliant that instead of draining colour from rock, and grass, and flower, it gave new and almost supernatural values to all.
We had the world to ourselves, a wonderful world like a vast silver bowl half full of jewels. ”

“ It seemed somehow as if my chauffeur were taking this monstrous thing too coolly. “Well, the fact remains that we're done,” I said, with suppressed fury. “If the Duke of Carmona has had a hand in this act, it's a sign that he means to get off while we're held up waiting for a new shaft and pinions to arrive—probably all the way from Paris. He can go to-morrow—”
“Beg pardon, sir; he can't, not in his own car,” said Ropes. “If we can't leave, no more can't he.” ”

“ If it had not been for that first glimpse, and if we had not read “Miranda of the Balcony” we should not have guessed, in walking from the station to the Alameda, that Ronda differed from other Moorish towns. But far away was a barrier of iron railing, and a curious effect as if beyond it everything ended except the sky. We walked on, reached that railing, and leaned over.
No picture, no book had been able to give us a real idea of Ronda. It was stupendous—wonderful. We stared down at the world beneath as if we hung in a balloon, for the rock fell away from our feet, a sheer precipice ”

“ I wondered in my black cell—“before Monica's eyes?” But aloud I said, “Thanks; don't be too long, or I shall be tempted to smash the door.”
“You'll find that impossible,” answered Carmona. “Don't worry if I seem to be gone an age. There's only one man on duty to-day who knows the secret of this room; I asked for him when we came, but his comrade said he was away on leave till four o'clock. It must be that now, and I'll have him here as soon as possible. He will be the more pleased to set you free, as he's an old friend of yours. ”

“ Farther on, Moorish houses with lofty miradors and beautiful capped windows were tucked between ugly new buildings, and across the shaded avenue of a green park was flung an extraordinary, four-winged spiral staircase of iron. I groaned at the monstrosity, saying that Pedro himself had never perpetrated an act more cruel; and the Cherub excused it sadly, by saying that it was convenient for the crowds to pass from one side of the street to the other, as I should see if I stayed beyond the Semana Santa for the feria.
“Look at the Giralda, and you'll forget the iron bridge,” said Pilar. ”

“ Never was such a lunch as that we had by the roadside. We all worked at spreading out the contents of the hampers, while the road-mender and his family bustled about, not as inferiors with the hope of a tip, but helping us as friends and hosts.
When we arrived, not a soul was to be seen, save the dwellers in the white box. The only living things beside the trio and ourselves, were the larks that sprang heavenward pouring jewels from throbbing throats, and a few unknown birds of brilliant red and yellow, like drifting flower-petals. ”