Here I was in Spain, my Spain—thanks to Ropes; and, again thanks to him,
probably out of danger from Carmona’s suspicions for some time to come,
barring accidents.
He would make inquiries at Irun when he arrived there, and learning that
the obnoxious person had been detained according to information received
from him, would pass on triumphantly. Even when fate brought his car and
ours together, as I hoped it often would, a sight of the two remaining
travellers, the American automobilist and his hideously-goggled chauffeur,
would cause him amusement rather than uneasiness.
He would say to himself that, so far as he was concerned, no harm had been
done, even if no good had been accomplished; for if the banished passenger
were indeed Casa Triana, he had done well to get rid of him. If, after
all, his quick suspicion had been too far-fetched, and he had caused the
arrest of an innocent tourist, that tourist would never know to whom he
owed his adventure, and would be powerless to trouble the Duke of Carmona.
As for Ropes, when the photograph taken of me years ago by the police in
Barcelona should reach the police in Irun, it would be seen that two young
men who are twenty-seven, tall, slim, and have dark moustaches, do not
necessarily resemble each other in other details. Mr. George Smith would
be generously pardoned for having occupied the attention of the police in
place of the Marqués de Casa Triana, and he would be free to rejoin his
fellow-travellers.
During the three or four minutes of discussion we had had before making
the “quick change” which transformed master into man, we had arranged to
communicate with Ropes by means of advertisements in _La Independencia_.
We would forward money in advance to that journal, enough to pay for
several advertisements, and could then telegraph our whereabouts at the
last minute, whenever the movements of Carmona’s car gave us our cue.
This was the best arrangement we could make in a hurry, and when we had
time to reflect, it did not seem to us that, in the circumstances, we
could have done better.
And so, come what might, the outlaw had crossed the border, and was in the
forbidden country of his hopes and heart.
In spite of compunction on Ropes’ account, I was happy, desperately happy.
I was free to watch over the girl I loved and who loved me; and I was
drinking in the air of the fatherland. It did actually seem sweeter and
more life-giving than in any other part of the world.
Dick laughed when I mentioned this impression, and said I ought to try the
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.”