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.
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