Part 75

“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.