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.”
