The Car of Destiny
things like these at any little venta. I know, for I have been with my
son. I am a heroine, my friends say. We will pack everything well for
you.”
“And the wineskin you must hang on the side of the car,” said Don
Cipriano, all solicitude for our welfare, poor fellow, believing happily,
as he did now, that neither Dick nor I was dangerous. “There’s no cure for
Spanish dust, except Spanish wine. Besides, you’re going through wild
country where automobiles are seldom seen. If peasants are inclined to
throw stones, the sight of a good skin of wine should soften them. And
what true man would risk damaging a wineskin?”
That fairy godmother, Doña Rosita, conceived a fancy for Dick, who flirted
with her in his bad Spanish so outrageously that she was delighted. He
made her feel young again, she said, and it was a shock to find that he
was an American. She had not forgiven America for the Cuban war, which she
had not understood in the least. “But _you_ are not wicked!” she
exclaimed. “I thought all American men were wicked, and would do anything
for money. _Ay de mi!_ I must again pardon Columbus for discovering your
country, I suppose; though I have often said in these last years, how much
better if he had left it alone. I used to stop in my carriage near the
Cristóbal Colón statue in the Prado, when the war was on, and laugh to
watch the people throw things, because they were annoyed with him for the
trouble he had brought. Yet now I see there’s something to thank him for,
after all.” This last with a look at Dick which must have melted his
American heart like water if she had been of the age of Pilarcita. But
what would she have said had she known that—indirectly—Columbus had sent
to Spain a rival for her adored Cipriano?
Ignorance being bliss, the delightful mother and son were a hostess and a
host almost too hospitable.
As if the hampers stowed in the car were not enough, a tremendous
breakfast on a table loaded with flowers was provided for us. But just as
we sat down, at ten o’clock, a servant on duty as scout appeared, panting
after a scamper across fields, to say that a motor had passed. Our
chauffeur sent word that it was _the_ motor; and was ready to start our
car.
This was the signal for confusion, cries of regret, wishes for good luck,
laughter, and exclamations. Pilar and the Cherub were persuaded to finish
their cups of thick chocolate, flavoured with cinnamon, while Dick and I
drank our strong coffee and left our _aguardiente_.
Off we went, in flowery Spanish speech kissing the señora’s feet, while
she kissed our hands; Don Cipriano leaped upon a horse to see us off, all
his dogs about him; and ten minutes later our pneus were pressing the
track in the white dust made by the Lecomte.
We soon lost sight of gay Madrid, with its domes and spires clear cut
against the white mountains, to run through a green landscape of growing
corn and grape, vineyards framed for our eyes with distant hills flaming
in Spanish colours, red and gold. Colonel O’Donnel pointed out an isolated
elevation which he said was the exact centre of Spain; and of course there
was a convent on its top. Every other hill had a ruined watch-tower, brown
against a sky of deeper, more thoughtful blue than Italy’s radiant
turquoise. Men we met rode upright as statues on noble Andaluz animals,
grand as war-horses in mediæval pictures; but some did not scorn to turn
abruptly aside at sight and sound of our motor, to go cantering across
fields to a prudent distance. Carters with nervous mules held striped rugs
over the creatures’ faces till we had passed; donkeys brayed and hesitated
whether to sit down or run away, but ended in doing neither; yet no man
frowned.
Dick said that now, at last, he began to feel he was really in Spain,
because we met the right sort of Spanish faces, the only kind he was ready
to accept as Spanish. He had been satisfied with the strongly
characteristic qualities of everything else (especially the balconies, the
hall-mark of domestic architecture in Spain); the rich, oily cooking; the
pillows, oh, the stony pillows! the manners of the people, and the
costumes of Castile. But the features of the people hadn’t been, till
to-day, typical enough to please him. He had expected in the north
mysterious looking Basques; then, something Gothic or Iberian, if not
Moorish, with a touch of the Berber to give an extra aquiline curve to the
nose. But not a bit of it! Noses were as blunt as in England, Ireland, or
America, and might have been grown there. It was only this morning that we
had flashed past a few picture-book Spanish features, and fierce, curled
moustaches.
“Wait till you get farther south,” murmured the Cherub, “you will see the
handsome peasants. They put townspeople to shame.”
“And mantillas—I want mantillas,” said Dick. “I’ve only seen one so far,
except in the distance at Vitoria; I expected every woman to wear one. Now
you, señorita, owe it to your country.”
Pilar laughed. “Fancy a mantilla in a motor-car. You haven’t _seen_ me
yet, señores—no, not even when I went to the play. When we’re at Seville,
why, then you’ll be introduced to the Real Me. Look you, I have but one
sole hat in this wide world, beyond this motoring thing I bargained for at
Burgos. You’ve no idea what a hat—such a hat as a self-respecting señorita
can put upon the head God made—costs in this land of Spain. Twice—three
times what it would be elsewhere, so travelled women say, and to have a
smart one is necessary a trip at least to Biarritz. As for Doña Rosita,
she is old-fashioned, and always wears the mantilla; indeed, on her
wedding tour to Paris she had to buy her first hat in Marseilles, she
says; for thirty years ago, you could hardly find one in Spain. Now, most
of the ladies in Madrid wear hats, except for the bull-fight; but in dear
Seville, it’s different. I shall no longer have a headache with the
hatpins which pinch these hairs of mine. Santa María Purísima, you shall
see what you shall see.”
She spoke as if to me; but she glanced at Dick, who—though he had still to
pose as the owner of the car—was growing fond of the tonneau, while Ropes
drove. Woe betide Don Cipriano if he had seen that glance!
By and by we turned off the main road at Cetafe, and got caught by closed
bars at a railway crossing.
“We shall probably be here an hour, and might as well lunch,” said the
Cherub resignedly; but when a humble-looking luggage train had crept in,
it was so impressed with our air of superior importance that, to our
surprise, it backed out rather than obstruct our honourable path; and the
gates were wheeled back for us to pass in front of the engine’s polite
little nose.
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.
Madrid seen from afar off had scarcely been impressive, but this Rome of
Spain—though we did not approach it by way of the world-famous bridge—was
grander than any picture had led me to believe.
We had seen nothing of the grey car yet, not even a cloud of dust, but we
knew it must be here, and everyone of us looked forward to watching the
face of the Duke when we should march into the dining-room of the best
hotel, where by this time he and his party were probably about to lunch.
In a few minutes I should see Monica, perhaps be as near to her as at the
_fonda_ of the Escurial. That was the thought most absorbing; yet my
spirit was on its knees before this ancient throne of kings.
I could hardly believe that the sullen yellow stream pounding its way
through the gorge, and shouldering aside huge rocks as if they were
pebbles, was really the Tagus, enchanted river of my childish dreams—the
river my father loved—the golden river I had scarcely dared hope to see.
Not a legend of the Tagus or Toledo that I did not know, I reminded myself
dreamily. I knew how, in the grand old days of the city’s glory, the Jews
of Jerusalem had respectfully sent a deputation to the wise Jews of
Toledo, asking: “Shall this man who says He is the Son of God be given up
to the Roman law, and die?” And how the Jews of Toledo had hastened to
return for answer: “By no means commit this great crime, because we
believe from the evidence that He is indeed the long looked-for Redeemer.”
How the caravan had made all speed back, arriving too late; and how,
because of their wisdom and piety, the Jews of Toledo had been spared by
the Inquisition when all others burned.
I knew how, in a time of disaster and poverty for Toledo, San Alonzo, a
poor man, prayed heartily to the Virgin, in whose lifetime the cathedral
had been begun, imploring her help for the town; how she came at his call,
and looking about to see what she could do, touched the rock, which
throbbed under her fingers like a heart, until all its veins flowed with
molten iron; how this iron was drunk by the Tagus in such draughts that
the water became the colour of old gold; and how after that, the city grew
rich and famous through the marvellous quality of its steel, which, the
faithful believe, owes its value to the iron-impregnated Tagus.
I knew how the King of the Visigoths had here become a Christian, and made
of Toledo the ecclesiastical capital of Spain. I knew how the Cid had
ridden to the city on Babieca, beside treacherous Alonzo. I knew how
Philip the Second had been driven away by the haughtiness of the clergy,
pretending greater love for Madrid, that town built to humour a king’s
caprice. I knew how, even as in the mountains round Granada, in every cave
among the rocks of the wild gorge, sleeps an enchanted Moor in armour, on
an enchanted steed, guarding hidden treasure, or waiting for the magic
word which will set him free to fight for his banished rulers. And yet,
here was I entering this ancient citadel mighty in history and fable, in
an automobile, with a photographic camera!
“But you are a banished prince yourself,” said Pilar, when I spoke
something of what was in my mind. “And you’ve come out of your enchanted
cave at the magic word. That magic word is—Love.”
XXI
THE DUCHESS’S HAND
High on the hill Colonel O’Donnel pointed out the Alcázar of many
vicissitudes, long since turned into a military academy, which has made
Toledo to Spain what Woolwich is to England. “There your father and I went
to school,” said he. “I come every year or two, and wander about with my
thoughts.”
With this, he began bowing right and left to young officers who sauntered
inside the gateway. Nearly everyone knew and seemed delighted to see him;
indeed, who could see the excellent Cherub, and not be glad?
He himself was happy. “There go your father and I!” he exclaimed, picking
out the two best-looking infants in a procession of incredibly small boys
proudly wearing a smart uniform. “Oh, where are the girls who used to
smile at us?”
So we drove into the Moorish-looking stronghold, through a labyrinth of
steeply ascending tunnels which were streets. They were so narrow that I
would not have believed the car could scrape along without smashing the
mud-guards, had not the Cherub valiantly urged us on, with assurances that
it could be done. And always we did slide through, the sides of the Gloria
so close to open doors and windows that we could have reached into dark
rooms, and helped ourselves to loaves of bread, brass cooking vessels,