The Car of Destiny
climate of America before I judged; but he admitted the extraordinary, yet
almost indefinable individuality of the landscape as well as the
architecture, which struck the eye instantly on crossing the frontier.
It was easy to classify as peculiarly Spanish the old Basque churches, the
long, dark lines of sombre houses bristling with little balconies, and
sparkling with projecting windows, whose intricate glass panes gave upward
currents of air in hot weather. All this, and much more was obvious in
town or village; but Dick and I argued over the distinctive features of
the landscape without fathoming the mystery which set it apart from other
landscapes.
What was so peculiar? There were hedges, and poplars, and other trees
which we had seen a thousand times elsewhere. There was a pretty, though
not extravagantly pretty, switchback road of fair surface stretching
before us, roughly parallel with the sea, giving glimpses here and there
of landlocked harbours with colliers and trampships at anchor. There was a
far background of snow mountains and a changing foreground of spring grass
and spring blossoms; interlacing branches embroidered with new leaves of
that pinky yellow which comes before the summer green.
There ought to have been nothing remarkable, save for the moving figures
which here and there rendered it pictorial; dark, upstanding men in red
waistcoats, driving donkeys; velvet-eyed girls, with no covering for their
heads but their shining crowns of jet-black hair, and none at all for
their tanned feet and ankles, though they carried shoes in their hands;
black-robed priests; brown-robed monks; smart officers; soldiers with
stiff, glittering shakos, and green gloves; oxen with pads of wool on
their classic, biscuit-coloured heads. Nevertheless, Dick agreed with me
in finding the landscape remarkable.
At last we began to wonder if the difference did not lie in colouring and
atmosphere. The sky effects were radiant enough to set the soul of an
artist singing, because of the opal lights, the violet banks of cloud with
ragged, crystal fringes of rain, the diamond gleams struck out from snow
peaks; and yet, despite this ethereal radiance, there was a strange
solemnity about the wide reaches of Spanish country, a rich gloom that
brooded over the landscape with its thoughtful colouring, never for a
moment brilliant, never gay.
“It’s painted glass-window country,” I said. “Old glass, painted by some
famous artist who died in the fourteenth century, and a little faded—no,
subdued by time.”
“You’ve hit it,” said Dick. “There _is_ an
old-glass-window-in-a-dim-cathedral look about the sky. It gives one a
religious kind of feeling, or anyway, as if you’d be thrown out of the
picture if you were too frivolous.”
“I feel far from frivolous,” said I. “But I’m excited. Look here; we’ll be
in San Sebastian and out of San Sebastian soon, if we keep on. But we
mustn’t keep on; for if we do we may miss the other car, and then I should
be as badly off as if I were in Ropes’ place at Irun.”
“We know they’re going to Seville,” said Dick.
“It’s a long cry to Seville. And Carmona may mean to travel by way of
Madrid, through Vitoria and Burgos, or he may mean to take a road which
Levavasseur in Biarritz told me was better, steering for Seville _via_
Santander and Salamanca. It depends on whether he wants to stop at the
capital, I suppose. Anyhow, as he’s unconsciously making our arrangements
as well as his own, there’s nothing for it but we must halt until he
passes and gives us our lead.”
“It’s all the same to me whether we halt or scorch,” said Dick. “I’ve got
more time than anything else. This is your circus; I’m only the
‘prisoner’s best friend,’ as they say in a court-martial. But if we should
go to Burgos, I’ve got an errand to do, if you don’t mind.”
“Why should I mind?” I asked.
“It’s to call on a young lady.”
“You never mentioned having friends there.”
“She’s Angèle de la Mole’s friend. All I know is that she’s Irish, name
O’Donnel; that she’s got a harmless, necessary father, and a brother in
whom my prophetic soul tells me Angèle is interested; that Papa and
Daughter are visiting Brother, who’s in the Spanish army for some weird
unexplained reason, and stationed in Burgos. I promised to take a package
with a present from Angèle to Miss O’Donnel if we stopped long enough at
Burgos, or, if we didn’t go there, to post it. I’ve also a letter
introducing us to Papa. Angèle said it was possible he might have known
your father, so probably he’s lived a good deal in Spain at one time or
another, or the idea wouldn’t have occurred to her. She thought, if we
went to see the O’Donnels, Papa might be useful in case you told him who
you really were; but I wasn’t to bother you about going out of your way
for their sakes; which is the reason I didn’t mention them until now, when
you spoke of Burgos.”
“If Carmona goes in that direction, he’s almost certain to spend the night
there,” said I, on the strength of such knowledge as much study of Spanish
road-maps had given me. “In that case, we shall spend the night too, and
there’ll be time for you to call on your O’Donnels; but as for me, I don’t
know that it would be wise to take extraneous people into my confidence.
And, if it won’t disappoint you, I hope we won’t have to go by Burgos,
although they say the cathedral’s one of the finest in the world, for if
the road’s as bad as rumour paints it, it must be abominable.”
“Well, you’ve got your springs bound up with a million yards of stout
cord, on purpose; and those extra buffers of India rubber Ropes put on to
keep the tyres from grinding against the mud guards; so we ought to get
off pretty well at worst,” remarked Dick. “As for me, I shall feel
defrauded if the car doesn’t soon begin to bound like a chamois from one
frightful obstacle to another, along the surface of the road, such ghastly
things have been dinned into my ears about Castile and La Mancha. So far,
we’ve nothing to complain of, and have been on velvet, compared to some of
the _pavé_ atrocities one remembers in Belgium and northern France.”
“I daresay we shall come to the chamois act yet,” said I. “But, so far,
we’re still in the heart of civilization. Here’s San Sebastian, and here’s
a café close to where Carmona must pass, so let’s stop and lie in wait.”
IX
A STERN CHASE
We were on the outskirts of San Sebastian, and to reach the café we turned
off the main road and ran the car into a side street. There, without being
ourselves conspicuous, we could see all that passed along the road beyond.
We had some vermouth, sitting at a little iron table outside the café
door, to excuse our presence. Every moment we expected to see the Duke’s
car shoot by, but time went on, and it did not come. We finished our first
edition of vermouth and had a second, with which we toyed and did not
drink, by way of keeping our place.
Had they punctured another tyre? Had Carmona stopped in Irun, and had any
mischance occurred there which might, after all, put the police on my
track?
Dick and I were beginning to get restive, and question each other with
raised eyebrows, when the big grey automobile charged past the end of our
street. Not a head in the car turned in our direction; and laying a couple
of pesetas on the table we sprang to the manning of our own road-ship. So
quick was our start that, when we spun out into the road, there was our
leader still within sight.
I had heard my father speak often of San Sebastian, which, situated in the
heart of the Basque country, had been the great Carlist centre, and even
when Carlist hopes died, retained most stoutly the Carlist traditions.
But, Carlist as he was at heart till the day of his death, he could not
fail to appreciate the tact of Queen Cristina, by whose wish a royal
summer villa had risen over the waters of the bay. Owing to this stroke of
clever policy, a poor and discontented town was transformed into the most
fashionable watering place of Spain, and surely if slowly disaffection
merged into prosperous self-satisfaction.
Because of stories I had heard my father tell, I should have liked to
explore the place; but the one thing of importance now was to keep the
grey car in sight until we could be certain which road it would take; so
there was time only for brief glances to right and left as we flashed on.
Through streets with high modern houses, more Parisian than Spanish, we
came at last upon a broad boulevard that led us by the sea. There had been
a picture at home of the deep, shell-like bay, guarded by the imposing
headlands of Monte Urgull and Monte Igueldo, the scene of much fighting in
the Carlist war. The royal palace, Villa Miramar, was new to me save for
the many photographs I had seen of it in Biarritz; but we had no more than
a glimpse of the unpretending red brick house on the hill, before we swept
through a tunnel that pierced a rocky headland, and came out into open
country.
Now our progress developed into a stern chase. By a wrong turn in a San
Sebastian street we lost the car ahead for a few moments, but beyond the
town, where mud, fresh after a recent shower, lay inch thick on the road,
we came upon the track of the flying foe.
There was the trail of the “pneus” as clear to read as a written message,
and we followed, relieved of doubt.
On, on we went towards the south, and the mountains of Navarre, and my
mind was free enough from strain at last to exult in each new glimpse of
the land for which I longed.
Ever since I was old enough to read, I had steeped myself in the history
and legend of my own country. I knew all its wars, and where they were
fought; I knew the names of the towns and villages, insignificant in
themselves, perhaps, made famous by great victories or defeats; and there
was time to think of them now, as we passed along the way the heroes of
the Peninsular War had taken; but there was no time to linger over
landmarks, not even at Hernani, where De Lacy Evans’ British legion was
shattered by the Carlist army in 1836, and where, in the church, we might
have seen the tomb of that Spanish soldier who, at Pavia, took prisoner
Francis I.
Rain fell in swift, fierce downpourings, but left us dry under the cover
of our car; and as we sped on, sudden gleams of sunlight shining on the
wet stone pavements of small brown villages, turned the streets to
glittering silver; while beyond, the trees sprayed gold like magic
fountains against the white sheen of far snow-peaks.
Thus we ran up the winding road by the river Urumea, worming our way deep
into the heart of the mountains; climbing ever higher with a wider view
unfolding to our eyes—a view as new, as strange to me as to Dick Waring.
And yet I felt at home with it, as if I had known it always.
As we ascended, the roads did what they could to deserve their evil
reputation. The rain of a few days ago had been snow in the mountains. The
surface of the road became like glue, and despite non-skidding bands, and
Waring’s careful steering, the car declared a sporting tendency to waltz.
Presently the glue liquefied. We were speeding through sheets of yellow
soup, which spouted from our pneus in two great curving waves, spattering
from head to foot the few wayfarers we met. Down the front glass coursed a
cataract of mud, and Waring could steer only by looking out sideways.
Thrown up by the steering-wheels, the yellow torrent thudded on the roof,
so that we were driving under a flying arch of liquid Spanish earth.
With the approach to a town, however, the way improved. The place was
Tolosa, and at the sound of our motor in the distance, a cry of
“Automovile, automovile,” came shrilly from a score of childish throats.