"A pretty little speech!" he observed sarcastically.

"Your Excellency!" cried Robledo, taking off his hat. "Welcome back to Seguro."

"Yes, I am well come to Seguro."

The natives doffed their hats, and like Pedro bowed and howled in the time-honored peasant way.

"The Duke! The Duke!"

"Pedro, go out and help the Princess and her servants with the luggage.

I want to speak to you alone, Robledo. Hurry, while the others are delayed with that execrable car. I walked a hundred yards to get here first."

He turned toward Dolores with a scowl.

"Those are charming sentiments for your fellow-townsmen, whose healthy common sense prevents them from rushing to a fool's death. Still, all fools are not dead yet. One of them will be here to-night. And you, senorita, will doubtless be pleased to look over him, as he has come all the way from America for the privilege of entering the castle and playing your hero."

Dolores looked at Robledo, as she parried:

"And did her Highness have to go all the way to America to find him?"

"Yes, indeed. He's from America, where all the fools come from!"

And the villagers joined in a merry chorus of intelligent laughter!

XIII

"GENTLEMEN, A MAN!"

Dolores had hurried upstairs, where she well knew there was a tiny attic in the rambling old building which acted as an excellent whispering gallery. Every word spoken in the larger room below could be heard from this vantage. She was no sooner secreted there than she heard the voice of the Duke.

"You received my telegram sent to San Fernandez?"

"Yes, Excellency. Antonio brought it over with the mail-bags."

"What about the Prince?"

"Ah, Excellency ... why ask? The same news as before. This stupid Vardos has been taking food to the castle every day, but he is too frightened to venture into the miserable old pile of stones. It is most droll, your Excellency."

"Well then, Robledo, I am satisfied as far as that goes. But you have work before you of a new character."

The swordsman struck a chair with his riding-crop. It seemed a favorite stage effect with him; the Duke was not slow in catching its significance.

"Just forget these little affectations, my good man," he said haughtily. "None of this bl.u.s.tering around me. I know that you do your work well, and at other times there is much to be desired. Now, in this case, you have a dangerous man to combat. And the combat must be final, no matter how difficult."

"How is he dangerous?" and there was a new note in Robledo's bl.u.s.tering voice.

"Unless he is stopped he may cause trouble for the traditions of Seguro. He is crafty as a _contrabandisto_, cunning as the snakes of the Pyrenees! He has been brought here by my cousin the Princess to make some special investigations." He laughed, with that cruel, mirthless inflection so characteristic. "She should have left that to me--and she will be sorry ere it is all over. This man has thwarted me twice already. Coming over on the steamer from America the scoundrel disappeared from the ship most remarkably, just when I had all arranged to put him into duress in Liverpool. I have yet to learn the secret of it. He must be discouraged ... you understand, Robledo?"

"Excellency, I can a.s.sure you that the Yankee pig will be convinced, in a language which he will understand, that his presence in the castle to-night is quite unnecessary. Have you any particular instructions?"

The Duke shook his head and grimaced suggestively.

"Any way you please, Robledo. You understand my general ideas on such subjects. Means are of no consequence to a born statesman. Results are the only permanent things in this world. However--I warn you. Don't underestimate your man. He will shoot; I imagine that he can shoot quickly and without a tremor."

"Ha, ha! Good opposition. I welcome such an antagonist--these fat-brained peasants about here are too simple to stimulate me to good work. I have been growing dull and commonplace--I am almost out of training, as they call it in the bull-ring."

"Come then, and I will give Pedro some money to buy drinks for the stupid dolts,--they can drink my health: it is none of the best these days, Robledo. My American trip was wearing. It is a wretched, unromantic hole--not a country, just a great mob of people."

"I can well believe your Excellency. This way, sir."

They returned to the big room of the tavern, and Dolores retired from the temporary confessional box. Her face showed mixed emotions--but predominating over any other influence was the great desire to serve the rulers of her family. Curiously loyal are these humble peasants of the inland Latin districts. Their lives follow the monotonous example of the generations before them: as their grandsires, their fathers were tradesmen of a certain calling, so do they follow the strata, contented to exist with the conventional beginning, moderately happy middle era, and inevitably stupid ending of their lives.

It is this which is so pleasing to the European aristocrats: no matter how bankrupt, incompetent, disreputable, the cla.s.s theory which is recognized by the ma.s.ses is, "Once a gentleman, always a gentleman."

It is inconceivable upon the Continent for a peasant's or even a tradesman's son or daughter to aspire to a higher level than that of the family. Exceptions to the rule are looked upon with distrust by superiors as well as the lowly equals: too much ambition is a temptation to the G.o.ds which is hardly respectable.

There is a smug contentment, then, in the feudal countries which is the surest bulwark of the "divine right of kings"--and courtiers! A pleasantly distended belly, a mellow thrill from cheap wine, a certainty about the repet.i.tion of regular meals and drinks, with enough clothes and shelter to maintain relative positions with the neighbors--this year, next year, and twenty years from now ... these things are the mess of pottage for which the Esaus of the kingdoms and princ.i.p.alities sell their birthrights and their souls!

Vardos--for instance--bodyservant and sole military retainer of a princely line which for generation after generation had considered itself in humiliating straits unless there were at least a thousand lances at beck and call--old Vardos had been thrown into a mental maelstrom by the sudden change in the lifelong existence. Sure of his meals and a modic.u.m of money for occasional visits to taprooms, he was now placed in a position of responsibility, one where executive and aggressiveness were demanded. Here old Vardos failed, because he was a peasant true to his type. The poor fellow had struggled with his grief these fifteen days--now he felt, with a helpless aching of the faithful heart, that he must have been in a sense responsible for the death of his master. He had pleaded with the young Prince not to enter the accursed place.

Insanity and suicide though it seemed to be to him, he could not help it. That was bad enough--but with the prospect of the beautiful Princess going into the place as well: life had become a horrible thing to him.

He sought the wayside shrine down the crooked village street. He threw himself upon his knees before it, vowing candles to every saint who had granted petty favors to him in the past!

He faced the great cathedral, rearing its pale crest in the dim light from the stars, vast and exalted above the miserable squalor of those whose ancestors had created its grandeur with their inspired devotion.

He told the Holy Family and the saints, with tear-choked voice, the quandary of his n.o.ble master, and begged that, though they should never grant him another request, somehow, somewhere, they find and bring a gallant adventurer who could turn defeat into victory, one more willing and competent than himself, to die!

And the answer to this prayer was unburdening his own soul with semi-religious phrases, in a Kentucky accent, addressed with unwonted and even picturesque fluency at the stumbling, stodgy Rusty Snow, who trudged along loaded with luggage and an insatiate hatred of this "cussed foreign joint," as he labeled it to himself.

The Princess and her maid had, at Jarvis' suggestion, left them with the automobile in its latest quagmire, to reach the shelter of the inn.

So it was that, as her va.s.sal and his va.s.sal struggled with the luggage in the dark, she reached the portal of the house of Pedro.

Robledo was hearkening carefully to certain careful instructions from the Duke of Alva, nodding with a smile of malicious portent at the final words.

"I will not fall short of my former reputation, your Excellency,"

declared the Don. "When a man reaches my time of life, after a success in the bull-ring as toreador, in the army as a duelist, and in the private retinue of so distinguished a n.o.bleman as yourself, he has a certain pride in his ability.... Indeed, I regret that I must waste my talents upon a stupid pig of a Yankee."

Shaking his head, Carlos drew out his purse.

"The man is no idiot, unfortunately. He has completely won the confidence of the Princess, despite his obvious trickeries. Now, however, I would like to attend to a few little tasks of cleaning up after that miserable trip."

Pedro was approaching them subserviently, a humble, bobbing head betokening his anxiety to please the fine folk.

"Anything else, your Excellency?" he stammered, overcome with the pomp and majesty of the situation.