There Were Delays At London, Delays
At Paris, Delays At Tours; And When At Last We Crossed The Pyrenees And
I Found Myself In Spain, It Was With An Incredulity Which Followed Me
Throughout And Lingered With Me To The End.
"Is this truly Spain, and am
I actually there?" the thing kept asking itself; and it asks itself
still, in terms that fit the accomplished fact.
II
SAN SEBASTIAN AND BEAUTIFUL BISCAY
Even at Irun, where we arrived in Spain from Bayonne, there began at
once to be temperamental differences which ought to have wrought against
my weird misgivings of my whereabouts. Only in Spain could a customs
inspector have felt of one tray in our trunks and then passed them all
with an air of such jaded aversion from an employ uncongenial to a
gentleman. Perhaps he was also loath to attempt any inquiry in that
Desperanto of French, English, and Spanish which raged around us; but
the porter to whom we had fallen, while I hesitated at our carriage door
whether I should summon him as _Mozo_ or _Usted,_ was master of that
_lingua franca_ and recovered us from the customs without question on
our part, and understood everything we could not, say. I like to think
he was a Basque, because I like the Basques so much for no reason that I
can think of. Their being always Carlists would certainly be no reason
with me, for I was never a Carlist; and perhaps my liking is only a
prejudice in their favor from the air of thrift and work which pervades
their beautiful province, or is an effect of their language as I first
saw it inscribed on the front of the Credit Lyonnais at Bayonne. It
looked so beautifully regular, so scholarly, so Latin, so sister to both
Spanish and Italian, so richly and musically voweled, and yet remained
so impenetrable to the most daring surmise, that I conceived at once a
profound admiration for the race which could keep such a language to
itself. When I remembered how blond, how red-blond our sinewy young
porter was, I could not well help breveting him of that race, and
honoring him because he could have read those words with the eyes that
were so blue amid the general Spanish blackness of eyes. He imparted a
quiet from his own calm to our nervousness, and if we had appealed to
him on the point I am sure he would have saved us from the error of
breakfasting in the station restaurant at the deceitful _table d'hote,_
though where else we should have breakfasted I do not know.
I
One train left for San Sebastian while I was still lost in amaze that
what I had taken into my mouth for fried egg should be inwardly fish and
full of bones; but he quelled my anxiety with the assurance, which I
somehow understood, that there would be another train soon. In the mean
time there were most acceptable Spanish families all about, affably
conversing together, and freely admitting to their conversation the
children, who so publicly abound in Spain, and the nurses who do nothing
to prevent their publicity. There were already the typical fat Spanish
mothers and lean fathers, with the slender daughters, who, in the
tradition of Spanish good-breeding, kept their black eyes to themselves,
or only lent them to the spectators in furtive glances. Both older and
younger ladies wore the scanty Egyptian skirt of Occidental
civilization, lurking or perking in deep-drooping or high-raking hats,
though already here and there was the mantilla, which would more and
more prevail as we went southward; older and younger, they were all
painted and powdered to the favor that Spanish women everywhere corne
to.
When the bad breakfast was over, and the waiters were laying the table
for another as bad, our Basque porter came in and led us to the train
for San Sebastian which he had promised us. It was now raining outside,
and we were glad to climb into our apartment without at all seeing what
Irun was or was not like. But we thought well of the place because we
first experienced there the ample ease of a Spanish car. In Spain the
railroad gauge is five feet six inches; and this car of ours was not
only very spacious, but very clean, while the French cars that had
brought us from Bordeaux to Bayonne and from Bayonne to Irun were
neither. I do not say all French cars are dirty, or all Spanish cars are
as clean as they are spacious. The cars of both countries are hard to
get into, by steep narrow footholds worse even than our flights of
steps; in fact, the English cars are the only ones I know which are easy
of access. But these have not the ample racks for hand-bags which the
Spanish companies provide for travelers willing to take advantage of
their trust by transferring much of their heavy stuff to them. Without
owning that we were such travelers, I find this the place to say that,
with the allowance of a hundred and thirty-two pounds free, our excess
baggage in two large steamer-trunks did not cost us three dollars in a
month's travel, with many detours, from Irun in the extreme north to
Algeciras in the extreme south of Spain.
II
But in this sordid detail I am keeping the reader from the scenery. It
had been growing more and more striking ever since we began climbing
into the Pyrenees from Bayonne; but upon the whole it was not so sublime
as it was beautiful. There were some steep, sharp peaks, but mostly
there were grassy valleys with white cattle grazing in them, and many
fields of Indian corn, endearingly homelike. This at least is mainly the
trace that the scenery as far as Irun has left among my notes; and after
Irun there is record of more and more corn.
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