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, [pg 63]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.
[pg 064] 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 [pg 65]a ruined watch-tower on each swelling hill, the illimitable plain lay sombre and impressive.