The Car of Destiny
Even the grown-ups rushed out, and were far more excited than we should
have expected in this motor-frequented part of Spain between Biarritz and
Madrid. In a French town of the same size scarcely a head would be turned
if an automobile passed; here people were as pleased as if we had been a
circus, though only a few moments before they must have had the joy of
seeing Carmona’s car go by.
“If it’s like this in the north, what must it be south of Madrid?” said I.
“Here they’re all wonderfully good-natured; delighted with us in towns and
villages—I believe they’d pay to see us if they had to!—the road-menders
give military salutes, and even the men whose mules and donkeys are
frightened grin as they cover up the silly beasts’ faces with their
shawls.”
“That’s because we behave like decent human beings instead of
marble-hearted scorpions,” said Dick, with an originality of simile which
he cultivates. “When we see that we’re frightening anything we slow down,
slip out the clutch, and glide so stealthily by that the creature gets no
excuse for hysterics. I used to think before you taught me to drive, and I
had the experience and the responsibility myself, that you wasted time
grovelling to animal prejudices; but I’ve changed my mind. I’ve learned
there’s no fun to be got out of pig-selfishness on the road, and leaving a
trail of distress behind.”
“If you hadn’t come to feel that, I couldn’t have made over my car to
you,” said I. “Road brutality would be peculiarly brutal in Spain, where
motoring’s a new sport, and peasants must be made accustomed to it. Every
motorist who slows down for frightened animals, or gets out to help, is
paving the way for future motorists.”
“Somehow I don’t believe Carmona’ll lay much pavement for us,” said Dick,
chuckling.
“Monica won’t stand it if he doesn’t,” said I. “He’s got her sitting
beside him, the beggar; and it’s his _métier_ to please her.”
We had lost the trail of the pneus, but as the country changed we picked
it up again. We were among trees now, and the mountain sides were green
with oak and poplar, though as we dropped the landscape darkened into
desolation. The bleak corner of the world towards which we were speeding
had that formless, featureless look which one sees on common faces, as if
it had been shaken together carelessly by the great Creator in an
absent-minded moment.
No scenery can be unattractive to a motorist while his car goes well, and
the sweet wind flutters against his face; but even I had to admit that
this country—illumined only by snow mountains walling the horizon—would be
irredeemable in dead summer heats.
My map, which I consulted as Dick drove, said that we had passed out of
Navarre into Alava; and suddenly I noticed that we had crossed the
watershed, for the bright streams, instead of running down to the Bay of
Biscay, were spinning silver threads towards the Ebro, on the way to
tumble into the Mediterranean by Tarragona.
Here and there my longing for the strange and picturesque was gratified by
the tragic grace of a tall, ruined watch-tower crowning a desolate hill, a
vivid reminder of days when red fire-signals flashed from hill to hill to
call good Christian men to arms against the Moors. Sometimes creamy
billows of Pyrenean sheep surged round our car, graceful and beautiful
creatures with streaming banners of wool, and faces only less intelligent
than those of the grey dog that rallied them to order, and the brown
shepherd in fluttering garments of red and blue.
The farther south we came, the darker grew the mild-eyed oxen our
automobile frightened. At Biarritz and beyond they were pale
biscuit-coloured; here, the sun seemed to have baked them to a richer
brown.
Nevertheless, that sun had no warm welcome for us to-day. We were nipped
by the bitter wind, which struck us the more coldly as we were hungry; and
about two o’clock we were not sorry to see in the middle of a
wide-stretching plain, the Concha de Alava—a large town which we knew to
be Vitoria.
Luncheon there might be counted upon. It was too chilly for a picnic meal
to be feasible with ladies, therefore Carmona’s car must stop for an hour
or two, and it was clear now that he would go by way of Burgos;
consequently, it was on the cards that Angèle de la Mole’s letter would be
delivered by hand.
We sneaked stealthily into Vitoria, glancing furtively about for a large
grey Lecomte; but it was not long before we caught sight of it in the
distance, in the main street, and drawn up before the principal hotel.
I would have given a good deal if I could have got word to Monica; for,
even if she had happened to see the red car following since Irun, she was
probably miserable in the thought that I had been turned back at the door
of Spain.
Of course, in the fear of disgusting her, Carmona might have kept the
curtain down on the little drama which he had stage-managed. Concealment
would have been difficult, however, as he must have signed his telegram to
the police; and on arriving at the custom-house, some of the facts would
have been liable to leak out in Monica’s hearing.
It was hard that she should be distressed for my sake as well as her own;
but my first fencing bout with the Duke had warned me against rashness,
and I decided that nothing could be done till we reached Burgos. There,
somehow, I would find a way to let her know that it was I, and not the
Duke, who had come out best.
Before joining Dick at lunch I engaged a small boy who sold newspapers in
the street to let us know when the other car started. This was to prevent
our being given the slip by any chance; but it proved a needless
precaution, as we scrambled through a Spanish menu, and still the grey car
slept in its coat of greyer mud before its chosen hotel; therefore Dick
and I bolted a hasty impression of Vitoria, as we had bolted our lunch.
He read aloud as we walked, bits out of a guide-book about Wellington, and
King Joseph, and the battle of Vitoria that had decided the fate of the
Peninsular War; but as it happened, I was more interested in a strange
effect of light and darkness in the sky which for a moment made an
unforgetable picture.
Another wild, April storm was boiling up, and where we stood in the
square, below the long flight of stone steps, the high cathedral above
seemed built against a cloud-wall of ebony. A long sabre of sunlight
struck upon the tower and threw a ray of reflected gold on the white
Virgin in her niche. Over all the town there was no other gleam of light,
and so had the afternoon darkened that it was as if a mourning veil hung
between our eyes and the solemn sky.
Suddenly the deep-toned bells of the cathedral boomed; and the doors
opening, hundreds of women clad in black, with close-folded black
mantillas poured out, down the double stairway to the square.
As they came nearer, and each figure took individual significance with the
breaking of the cloud, the rich browns and blue-shadowed greys of the
buildings—deep and soft as velvet—attained fine value as a background for
lace-framed faces, and the vivid colours of little children’s cloaks.
For a single instant I forgot even Monica, in the tingling sensation that
the life of Spain was throbbing round me, but a touch on my arm brought me
back to her with a bound.
“The grey car is getting ready to start, señor,” murmured a Spanish voice,
as two Spanish eyes looked up—hopeful of pesetas—into mine.
X
THE UNEXPECTEDNESS OF MISS O’DONNEL
I think that not once did Carmona or anyone else in the Lecomte spy the
car which, with the unflagging obstinacy of a bloodhound, kept on the
fresh trail of the pneus that began again outside Vitoria; for while we
had the trail we were satisfied to hover always beyond eyeshot of those in
front.
We had a crowd to see us leave the town, a laughing crowd who seemed to
wonder why people in their senses should rush about the world when they
could stop at home and take siestas. And the peasants by the roadside were
amazingly good-natured too, though we disturbed their avocations and upset
the calculations of their animals.
Stately Spanish señores, whose long brown or indigo _capas_ trailed over
their mules’ backs, smiled thoughtfully and envied us not, rather pitied
us, perhaps. Barefooted women in yellow shawls gave kind smiles, and
flashed looks from eyes like stars, as often blue as black, but always
singularly Celtic. Scarcely a face but was furnished with grave Celtic
features; for Celts these people were long before they were Spaniards; and
there is no type so persistent, except the Jewish.
One handsome old man on a donkey so lost control of his beast when we
swept into view, that he was dislodged, and would have fallen on his face
had he not enmeshed his knees in some intricate tracery of rope. Round and
round spun the frightened animal in the midst of the road, like a cat
chasing its own tail, the rider toppling over, his well-cut nose all but
scraping the ground.
Our car was stopped and I was out in a moment, though it must have been a
long and giddy moment to that human spinning-jenny. A few tangled seconds,
and I had him unwound and reseated, expecting no gratitude. But to my
surprise, when I got the old fellow right side up, I found him wreathed in
smiles, pouring out thanks and wishes for my good speed. Remembering
experiences in other lands which call themselves enlightened, I glowed
with pride of my country folk, especially when the victim of progress
politely refused five pesetas.
As we came nearer to Old Castile, the ancient land of many castles, I felt
as a man must when at last he comes to a house which is his, though never
until now has he held the key and been free to enter.
The northern provinces, peopled by mysterious Basques alien to us in blood
and language, I could scarcely look upon as Spain. But in Castile I saw
the heart and citadel of my native country. My father was Andaluz; my
mother Castiliana, and she used to say that in my nature were united the
qualities of the two provinces—Castilian pride and stubbornness; the
gaiety and recklessness of the true Andaluz.
I hoped that some change of scenery, some sign given by Nature, might mark
the passage into Castilla la Vieja; therefore I was grateful when the car
ran upon a stately bridge, hung above a broad river that was a flood of
tarnished gold. Thence we looked across to the old buttressed and
balconied town of Miranda del Ebro, strange and even startling in its wild
setting of white mountains; and as we slowed down in admiration, from a
dark secretive tunnel which was the principal street of the place, there
seemed to blow out, like wind-driven petals of flowers, a flock of girls
in golden yellow, tulip red, and iris blue. Then, as we looked, followed a
string of black mules with crimson harness, pressed forward by a dozen
young men in short blue trousers, capped like Basques with the red birret.
It was like coming into a picture which our arrival had, in some magic
way, endowed with life; and the effect did not wear off as we ran into the
shadow-tunnel, where the brown dust lit up with flames of colour. Under
the balconies bristling over narrow _calles_, little shops and booths
blazed with red and green peppers, glowed with oranges and the paler gold
of lemons, glimmered with giant pearls which were Spanish onions.
Miranda, I thought, was worthy of Old Castile; and when but a short
distance further on, the way seemed blocked by a high ridge of mountains
flung across our path, I began to hope that my mother’s country—that home
of highest Spanish pride and honour—had some real magnificence of scenery
to give us. We wound into the splendid gloom of the gorge of Pancorbo, cut