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
like a sword-cleft in the rock; and I said that this scene alone was worth
a journey into Spain.
There was room only for the road, and the foaming Oroncillo tearing its
way through the mountain. High over our heads, where fingers of sunlight
groped, the railway from Paris to Madrid looped its spider’s web along the
precipice, winding through tunnel above tunnel in miniature rivalry with
the sublimities of the St. Gothard. Below, deep in the shadow of the
gorge, crouched the sad village of Pancorbo itself, stricken, desolate,
articulate only in its two ruined castles on the height, Santa Engracia
and Santa Marta, imploring Heaven with silent appeal. Still higher,
towered a guardian mountain of astonishing majesty, seeming to bear aloft
on a petrified cushion a royal crown of iron. It was a place to call up in
memory with eyes shut. This was the majestic entrance into Castile; but it
raised my hopes only to dash them down. Once past the serrated needles and
fingers of Dolomite rock which made the grandeur of the gorge, we came
again to monotony of outline, and began to realize Castile as it is; a
vast and lonely steppe, wind swept, bounded by an infinite horizon.
Treeless, silent, unbroken by hedge or boundary, guarded by a ruined
watch-tower on each swelling hill, the illimitable plain lay sombre and
impressive.
No labourers were to be seen; no villages were in sight, whence men could
come to till the land; nevertheless, everywhere were signs of cultivation
by invisible hands, harvests to be reaped by men who would spring from one
knew not where.
Yet the monotony of these tremendous spaces was redeemed by such changeful
splendour of colour as I had never seen. Swelling undulations, worthy to
be named mountains, were warm with the purple of heather, though no
heather grew upon them. Sometimes you could have fancied, from a sudden
outburst of radiance on a distant hilltop, that a rainbow had lain down to
rest. And through all there was never absent that impression that this was
painted-glass-window country with its rich tones of crimson and violet,
its palely luminous skies, and the solemnity of its blended hues. Always
there was a haunting effect of sadness, even in the spring purity of those
white blossom-arches which decorated the brown monotony of our roads.
The sky still burned dusky red when in the midst of a wide plain, the
soaring twin-spires of Burgos stood up for our eyes against a rose veil of
sunset pinned with the diamond heads of stars. Away to our left, as we ran
towards the town, was a dark building like Eton College chapel standing on
a wind-swept hill; and this I knew to be the convent of Miraflores, where
Isabel la Católica employed Gil de Siloe to make for her father and mother
the “most beautiful tomb in the world.”
I felt a sense of possession in the grand old town, coming upon it thus at
its best; and I was glad that fate had driven me into my own land _en
automobile_. Even though, in following Carmona to watch over the girl we
both loved, I might have to keep often to the beaten track made
commonplace by tourists, the way would never be really commonplace, as to
sightseers who take the ordinary round by train.
Each new hour of life on the road would build up knowledge for me of my
people and my country. I should not be studying it in any obvious,
guide-book way, and I should learn more of real Spain in a few weeks than
in months of conscientious railway plodding from one point to another.
There was no question which hotel Carmona might choose. He would go to the
best; consequently unobtrusive persons whose hopes lay in keeping to the
background, must select one less good.
We halted outside the town, while I consulted a guide-book for the most
Spanish _fonda_ in Burgos. When, straining my eyes in the twilight, I read
out a name, Dick exclaimed, “That’s where Angèle’s friends the O’Donnels
are staying.”
“All the better,” said I. “You can carry out your commission without
trouble. Perhaps you’ll see them at dinner. They’re sure to be the only
foreigners there, so it will be easy to pick out their Irish faces in a
dining-room full of Spaniards.”
There was little room in my mind for the O’Donnel family, however. We were
near Monica now, and my one desire was to let her know that I had not
failed.
We drove through a fine old gateway, up a broad street, and past big
barracks, opposite to which was the hotel where Carmona would stop. But
his Lecomte had already disappeared; and though Dick clamoured for dinner,
I waited only long enough to secure rooms at our own _fonda_ and put up
the car, before going out in search of information.
By this time the Duke and his friends would be dining, and I could venture
as far as the lower offices of their hotel without much fear of being seen
by Carmona’s sharp eyes. In any case, I decided to risk it, and on the way
mapped out a plan of action.
A couple of porters were in the bare hall of the ground floor as I
entered. Walking in with a businesslike air, I said in Spanish, “Have you
some people here who came in a red automobile? They ought to have arrived
this evening.”
“No, señor,” replied one of the men. “We have a party staying for the
night who came in a grey automobile.”
Good fellow, how well he played into my hands! Hiding delight under a look
of disappointment, I said that my friends were in a red automobile. “They
may have been belated,” I went on. “They’ll probably turn up before
midnight. I hope you’ll have good rooms to give them, at the front of the
house. They’re very particular.”
“I’m afraid all our best rooms are occupied,” said the man. “The señor who
came in the grey automobile has taken five rooms along the front, on the
first floor, with a private sitting-room. Unfortunately, your friends will
have to put up with something at the back.”
I expressed regret, and went away joyful, having astonished the porter by
pressing upon him two pesetas. I now knew all I wanted to learn,
even—roughly speaking—the position of Monica’s room; and I saw a way of
sending her a message.
Dick was ready for dinner when I got back, but I did not try his patience
long. He had inquired if the O’Donnels were still in the hotel, and had
been told that they were, though they were leaving in a day or two. This
was all we knew when we entered the dining-room, but, as a good many
people were still seated at the long table and the numerous small ones, we
glanced about in search of Mademoiselle de la Mole’s friends.
There was not a face to be seen which you would not confidently have
pronounced to be Spanish, if you had met it at the North Pole.
Dick and I sat down at a little table and began to talk in English, while
round us on every side the Spanish language—pure Castilian, and slipshod,
mellifluous Andaluz—gushed forth like a golden fountain.
Hunger, long unappeased, at first inclined Dick to a cynical view of life
in general, and Spanish hotel life in particular, but his temper improved
as the meal went on, and he even forgave me for deserting a starving man.
“No sign of the O’Donnels,” said he. “Perhaps they’ve a private
dining-room.”
“I doubt there’s one in the house,” said I.
“Well, I’ll inquire later,” Dick went on. “I’ve looked at every face here,
and—”
“At one in particular,” I cut in.
Dick reddened. “I hope I haven’t been staring,” said he; “but she _is_ the
ideal Spanish girl, isn’t she? If I were an artist, I’d want to paint
her.” As he spoke, his eyes wandered towards the table next ours, which,
since a dish of Spanish peppers, rice, and chicken made a man of him, had
monopolized all the attention he could spare from dinner.
I had noticed this; hence my gibe. But Dick was not far wrong about the
girl.
Her place at the table put her opposite him; and her companion was a
rotund, brown man, with the beaming face of a middle-aged cherub, and the
habit of murmuring his contributions to the conversation in an Andalucían
voice, with an Andalucían accent mellifluous as Andalucían honey.
The girl herself was true Andaluza, too, though of a very different type
from the cherubic person who (Dick hoped) was her father. No such brown
stars of eyes ever opened to the world outside Andalucía; nor did any save
an Andaluza know, without being taught, how to give such liquid, yet
innocent, glances as those, which occasionally sparkled from under her
long lashes for Dick, when the Cherub was not looking.
She was a slim young thing, with a heart-shaped face of an engaging olive
pallour; a pretty, self-conscious mouth, which changed bewitchingly from
moment to moment; and heavy masses of dark hair piled high after the
Spanish fashion, as if to suit a mantilla—hair so smooth and glossy that,
from a little distance, it had the effect of being carved from a block of
ebony.
“She’s perfect of her kind,” said I; “but I thought you preferred American
types.”
“Rot!” said Dick. “Comparisons are odious. I say, thank Heaven for a
pretty girl, whatever she may be. But there’s something particularly
fascinating about this one.”
“I see a serious objection to her from your point of view,” I went on.
“She’s too young. You draw the line at them under twenty-two. I’ll bet you
she won’t see twenty-two for a couple of years yet.”
“She might be worth waiting for,” said Dick.
“No good. She’ll be married long before twenty-two. All self-respecting
Spanish girls are. You’d better not think of her any more. Forget her, and
look up Miss O’Donnel.”
“Angèle de la Mole says Miss O’Donnel’s pretty,” said Dick. As he spoke,
he beckoned a waiter; and I noticed that the girl with the eyes no longer
made any pretence of hiding her interest in Dick. She even whispered to
her companion, who, after listening to what she had to say, turned to look
at us with benign curiosity.
“Ask whether he knows Colonel O’Donnel and Miss O’Donnel by sight,” Dick
commanded when the waiter appeared, to breathe benevolence and garlic upon
us in equal quantities. He was shy of airing his own Spanish before a
roomful of Spanish people.
I asked; the waiter looked surprised, and to Dick’s confusion and my
astonishment, indicated the occupants of the next table.
“The colonel and the señorita,” said he. It was so startlingly like an
introduction that the cherubic brown man sprang up and bowed; and the
girl, bending over the _mazapan_ in her plate, let us see the very top
coil on her crown of black hair.
Dick, overwhelmed, and recalling every word we had said, as a drowning man
recalls each wicked deed of his life from childhood up, got to his feet,
and began stammering explanations.
“Well, that shows what an idiot a man can make of himself,” said he.
“Miss—Mademoiselle de la Mole gave me a letter of introduction, and a
parcel with some little present, and I was looking around for you. My
name’s Richard Waring; I don’t know whether mademoiselle’s written about
me. Anyhow—”
“Señor,” announced Colonel O’Donnel, grieved at Dick’s distress; “no
entiendo.”
“Habla usted español?” asked the girl. “No Inglees, we, much.” And she
smiled a dimpled smile, straight at Dick, with one side glint for me.
Dick was, to use against him a favourite word of his own, flabbergasted.
“Then you’re not Colonel and Miss O’Donnel?” said he. “I though you
couldn’t be, but—”
“Si, si,” the Cherub reassured him, nodding. “O’Donnel. Aw—right.” He
laughed so contagiously that we laughed too; and I found my heart warming
to these unexpected, surprising friends of Angèle de la Mole’s.
“Me María del Pilar Inés O’Donnel y Alvarez,” the girl introduced herself.
“Angèle de la Mole, mi—mi _fren_.” Having wavered so far, between Spanish
and English, she flung herself headlong into her native tongue. This was
the signal for the Cherub also to begin fluent explanations, both fluting
Andaluz together, and so fast, that Dick (painstakingly taught a little
Castilian by me in leisure moments) found himself at sea, and drowning.
I had to translate for him such facts in the O’Donnel family history as I
could unravel from the tangled web. The mystery of Angèle de la Mole’s
Spanish-speaking Irish friends (which she must have refrained from
explaining in order to play a joke upon Dick) was solved in a sentence. An
O’Donnel grandfather had fought in Spain under Wellington in the
Peninsular War, and stayed in Spain because he loved a Spanish girl who
had many acres. The Cherub’s father was born in Spain, and spoke little
English. The Cherub himself spoke none, or but a word or two. He was a
colonel in the Spanish army, now retired. That was all; except that his
son and daughter had once studied an English grammar, until they came to
the verbs; then they had stopped, because life was short and full of other
things. “But,” said Miss O’Donnel proudly, “me know, two, three, word.
Lo-vely. Varry nice. Aw raight. Yes.”
When she thus displayed the store of her accomplishments, punctuated with
dimples, any man not head over ears in love with another girl, would have
given his eyes to kiss her. I was sorry for Dick. As for me—I found myself
longing to tell Doña María del Pilar Inés O’Donnel y Alvarez all about
Lady Monica Vale, with the conviction that her help would be of
inestimable value.
Such is the power of a girl’s eyes upon weak man, even when he adores a
very different pair of eyes; and already it was strange to remember my
stiff disclaimer of a wish to know the O’Donnels. I had called them
“extraneous.” What a dull ass!