Part 51

“He can be terrible. He has nearly killed two men—strangers who teased him, so he meant no harm, poor darling! and they daren’t let any except black horses come near him. No Muira bull is more savage than he if he’s roused. You know, the Duke of Carmona’s bulls are as celebrated as the Muiras themselves. But Vivillo has always loved me, and one or two others—me best, though—and he’ll eat out of my hand, the great brown velvet beast, like a kitten.”

“How long since he’s seen you?” asked Dick.

“Six weeks.”

“I wouldn’t trust his memory.”

“I trust it as I would my brother’s. You shall see me petting him.”

“Great Scott! you won’t let her risk her life with this wild beast, will you, Colonel O’Donnel?” Dick cried out.

But the Cherub smiled his placid smile.

“Don Cipriano calls her Una, because she can tame wild beasts,” said he.

Dick’s face became almost too expressive. If he did not want Pilar’s eyes to read his every emotion, I thought he would be wiser to put on his motor-mask.

XXV

WHAT CORDOBA LACKED

Through a flowery field of cloth-of-gold we came, while the afternoon was young, into Cordoba—“Kartuba the Important,” lying like a grave entombing its dead glory, prone at the foot of tombstone mountains.

After the dazzle of wild-flowers shining in the sun, and the ozone of country breezes, a sudden entrance into the network of narrow streets was like being thrown, without a clue, into the Minotaur’s dark labyrinth.

I had thought that no town could have narrower streets than Toledo; but the streets of Cordoba were mere slits between house-walls. As we scraped through on the car, Dick likened the town to a huge white cake divided into slices by a sharp knife, but left in shape with only one or two pieces pulled out to loosen the mass.

Still, the stone-paved slits contrived to make pictures; with here and there a pair of splendid Moorish doors, a row of ancient eastern-patterned windows, or a fairy glimpse of a sunlit patio beyond a tunnel of shadow; a fountain spraying jewels, a waving of palms and glow of hanging roses.

“She’s sure to be here,” I said to myself, as we stopped at last before the principal hotel. “Since the journey’s supposed to be a pleasure trip, Carmona’s bound to give his guests time to see the sights of Cordoba.”

But nothing was known of the Duke and his party at the hotel, although there was a rumour that an automobile had passed through the town in the morning.

The Cherub, consulted, was of opinion that if Carmona’s car had come, it must have remained.

“There’d be nowhere for them to stop afterwards short of Seville,” he said, “unless Carmona, and that’s near Seville. They must be lurking in Cordoba—perhaps at the Marqués de Villa-blanca’s, who’s a friend of the Duke’s. We shall come across our lovely little lady presently, if we get about in the town; in the Paseo del Gran Capitán, or the Patio de los Naranjos, or the cathedral, or by the ruins of the Alcázar.”

“Besides, I thought you’d made up your mind not to worry till we got to Seville,” said Dick.

“So I had,” I answered. “But I have a feeling as if something had gone wrong.”

“Any reason for the feeling—except the feeling itself?” asked Dick.

I shook my head, not caring to mention the letter that might have gone astray. “Nothing I can define.”

“Then I guess it’s all right, and you’re developing nerves.”

“I know just how he feels,” said Pilar, with a reproachful look at Dick, with whom she was at odds since the episode of the bull. “There was an expression in Lady Monica’s eyes, wasn’t there, at Manzanares, as if she were sad? Oh, I saw it; and they wouldn’t let me get within whispering distance of her afterwards, or I should have found out what it meant. I had the idea that they were particularly anxious to keep me away, and I wondered if there were any new reason. I’m not surprised that Don Ramón is worried. One can see that Señor Waring’s never been in love!”

“Oh, haven’t I?” exclaimed Dick; which, of course made matters worse; and to mend them, he went on blundering. "What do you know about the symptoms?"

“Girls are born knowing things it takes men years to learn,” said Pilar.

It did not allay my anxiety that she should have noticed what I had noticed. But I clung to the Cherub’s assurance, hoping, when we had set out on our explorations, to meet her, to see her face light up with the radiance I knew.