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 [pg 58]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, [pg 59]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.