Four Months Afoot in Spain Part 18

"Aw, I don't talk no French!"

"Then I suppose it 'll have to be English," I answered, in the first words of that language I had spoken in ninety-six days--and in truth they came with difficulty.

"Go' bly' me!" burst out the astounded knight of the steering-wheel.

"'Ow ever 'd you get in this corner o' the world? Say, I ayn't said more 'n 'yes, sir' or 'no, sir' to their lordships--" with a slight jerk of the head toward the men under the awning--"in so long I 've bally near forgot 'ow. 'Ere it is Sunday an'--"

"Sat.u.r.day," I interrupted.

"Sunday, I say," repeated the chauffeur, drawing out a card on which were penciled many crude crosses. "Ere 's 'ow I keep track--"

"Senora," I asked, turning to a woman who was filling a pitcher at a hydrant behind me, "que dia tenemos hoy?"

Her lip curled disdainfully as she answered:

"Tiens! Vous me croyez un de ces barbares-la?"--tossing her head toward the mountain range behind us.

"Mille pardons," I laughed. "Force of habit. This monsieur and I are disputing whether to-day is Sat.u.r.day or Sunday."

"Out again without your nurses!" she cried sarcastically. "Sat.u.r.day, of course."

"Now 'ear that!" said the chauffeur, almost tearfully, when I interpreted. "'Ow ever can a man keep track of anything in this bally country? Say, what was that question you was tryin' to ask me?"

"I 'm walking from Gib to Bordeaux," I remarked casually, and repeated my former inquiry. His expression changed slowly from incredulity to commiseration. Suddenly he thrust a hand into his pocket.

"I say, won't you 'ave a mite of a lift? Why, we took near all yesterday to come from that place. You couldn't walk there in a month."

"No, thanks, I 'm fairly well heeled," I answered.

"Better 'ave a yellow-boy," he persisted, drawing out several English sovereigns. "Lord, you 're more 'n welcome, y' know. They ayn't no bloomin' use to me 'ere!"

At that moment I noted that the milords under the awning had spread out before them a large touring map, and I left the chauffeur gasping at my audacity as I stepped across to them. The older was struggling to give an order to the waiter, who crouched towel on arm over them. There is a strange similarity between a full-grown Briton attempting to speak French and a strong man playing with a doll.

"Beg pawdon, gentlemen," I said, when I had helped them out of the difficulty, "but would you mind my glancing at your map? I want to find--"

"Ah--why, certainly," gasped one of the startled n.o.bles.

But even with the chart before me I was no nearer a decision, for the two roads appeared of almost equal length. As I turned away, however, a poster on a nearby wall quickly settled my plans. It announced a great bullfight in Bayonne the next afternoon, with Quinito, Mazzatinito, and Regaterm, among the most famous of Spain's matadores--far more so than any it had been my fortune to see in that country.

I sped away at once along a macadamed highway at the base of the Pyrenees beside a clear river--a mere "riviere" to the French, but one that would have been a mighty stream in Spain. Its banks were thickly grown with willows. On the other hand the mountain wall, no less green, rose sheer above me, bringing an unusually early sunset. Along the way I met several old men, all Basques, who noting that I also wore the boina greeted me in their native "Euscarra." Not a word of any other tongue could they speak; and when I shook my head hopelessly at their hermetical language, they halted to gaze after me with expressions of deep perplexity. So, too, in the mountain-top village of Bidarry to which I climbed long after dark after a dip in the river, all speech was Basque; though some of the younger inhabitants, finding I was of their race only from the cap upward, fell to talking to me in fluent French or Spanish.

The first hours of the following clay were in the highest degree pleasant. Thereafter the country grew hilly, the sun torrid, and as I was forced to set the sharpest pace to reach the bullring by four. I put in as dripping a half-day as at any time during the summer; and I have yet to be more nearly incinerated in this life than in the sol of the great "Place des Taureaux" of Bayonne, crushed between a workman in corduroys and a Zouave in the thickest woolen uniform the loom weaves.

The fight, like the ring, was Spanish in every particular, though the programmes were printed in French. It was by all odds the greatest corrida I was privileged to attend during the summer, for the three matadores stand in the front rank of their profession. Yet it was somehow far less exhilarating than those I had seen in Spain. One had a feeling that these past masters were running far less risk than their younger colleagues; one enjoyed their dexterity as one enjoys a seasoned public speaker, yet the performance lacked just the thrill of amateurishness.

Here, too, I saw Spain's greatest picador, the only one indeed I ever saw accomplish what the picador is supposed to do,--to hold off the bull with his _garrocha_. This he did repeatedly, placing his lance so unerringly that he stopped the animal's most furious charges and forced him to retire bellowing with rage and with blood trickling down over his shoulders. In all the afternoon this king of the pike-pole had but one horse killed under him. It was in connection with this one fall that Quinito, the boldest of the matadores, won by his daring such applause as seemed to shake the Pyrenees behind us. Moreno lay half buried under his dead horse, in more than imminent danger of being gored to death by the bull raging above him. In vain the anxious caudrilla flaunted their cloaks. All at once Quinito stepped empty handed into the ring and caught the animal by the tail. Away the brute dashed across the plaza, twisting this way and that, but unable to bring his horns nearer than an inch or two of his tormentor who, biding his time, let go and vaulted lightly over the barrier.

I quitted Bayonne with the dawn and for four days following marched steadily on across the great Landes of France. Miles upon miles the broad highway stretched unswerving before me through an ultra-flat country between endless forests of pine. On the trunk of every tree hung a sort of flowerpot to catch the dripping pitch. There was almost no agriculture, nothing but pine-trees stretching away in regular rows in every direction, a solitude broken only by the sighing of the wind sweeping across the flatlands, where one could shout to the full capacity of one's lungs without awakening other response than long rolling echoes. Once in a while a pitch-gatherer flitted among the trees; less often the highway crossed a rusty and apparently trainless railroad at the solitary stations of which were tumbled hundreds of barrels of pitch.

My shoes wore out, those very oxfords "custom-made" in America and honestly tapped in Toledo, and I was forced to continue the tramp in alpargatas, or what had here changed their name to _sandales_. As my twenty-franc piece melted away a wondering began to grow upon me whether I was really homeward bound after all; so myriad are the mishaps that may befall a mere letter.

Still the unswerving road continued, the endless forests stretched ahead. Such few persons as I met scowled at me in the approved French fashion, never once imitating the cheery greeting of the Spaniard. Now and again a man-slaughtering automobile tore by like some messenger to or from, the infernal regions, recalling by contrast one of the chief charms of the land I had left behind. Hardly one of those destroyers of peace and tranquillity had I seen or heard in all Spain.

Four months afoot had not improved my outward appearance. It was not strange that the post-office officials of Bordeaux stared at me long and suspiciously when I arrived at length one afternoon with a single franc in my pocket. The letter was there. When I had, after the unwinding of endless red tape, collected the amount of the order, my journey seemed over indeed.

The "Agents Maritimes" to whom I applied accepted me readily enough as an emigrant to America, agreeing to pick me up in Bordeaux and set me down unstarved in New York for the net sum of two hundred and three francs. But there came a hitch in the proceedings. The agent was firing at me with Gaelic speed the questions prescribed by our exacting government--"Name?" "Age?" "Profession?"--and setting down the answers almost before I gave them, when:

"Have you contracted to work in the United States?"

"Oui, monsieur."

He stopped like a canvas canoe that has struck a snag.

"C'est impossible," he announced, closing his book of blanks with a thump. "We cannot of course sell you a ticket."

I plunged at once into an explanation. I advanced the information that the contract labor law was not framed to shut out American citizens. I protested that I had already toiled a year under the contract in question, and for my sins must return to toil another. I made no headway whatever.

"It is the law of the United States," he snapped. "Voila! C'est a.s.sez."

Luckily I had a day to spare. By dint of appealing to every maritime authority in the city I convinced the agent at last of his error. But it was none too soon. With my bundle and ticket in one hand and a sort of meal-sack tag to tie in my lapel--if I so chose--in the other, I tumbled into the night train for Paris just as its wheels began to turn.

Emigrant tickets are not good in France by day. There was one other tagged pa.s.senger in the compartment, a heavy-mannered young peasant likewise wearing a boina. Being thus drawn together we fell gradually; into conversation. He was at first exceeding chary, with the two-fold canniness of the Basque and of the untraveled rustic whose native village has warned him for weeks to beware wily strangers. When I displayed my ticket, however, he lost at once his suspicion and, drawing out his own, proposed that we make the journey as partners. He was bound for Idaho. We did not, however, exchange ideas with partner-like ease, for though he had pa.s.sed his twenty-five years in the province of Guipuzcoa he spoke little Spanish.

Near midnight a few pa.s.sengers alighted and I fell into a cramped and restless sort of dog-sleep from which I awoke as we screamed into Versailles. When we descended at the Montparna.s.se station we were joined by three more Basques from another compartment. They, too, wore boinas and, like my companion, in lieu of coats, smocks reaching almost to the knees. They were from near Pamplona and had tickets from Bordeaux to Fresno, California, having taken this route to avoid the difficulties of leaving Spain by sea.

The Paris agent of the "American Line" did not meet us in silk hat and with open arms; but when we had shivered about the station something over an hour an unshaven Italian of forty, with lettered cap and a remarkable a.s.sortment of unlearned tongues picked us up and bore us away by omnibus to his "Cucina Italiana" in the Pa.s.sage Moulin. Breakfast over, I invited my fellow-emigrants to view Paris under my leadership.

They accepted, after long consultation, and we marched away along the Rue de Lyon to the site of the Bastille, then on into the roar of the city, the Spaniards so helplessly overwhelmed by the surrounding sights and sounds that I was called upon times without number to save them being run down. At length we crossed to the island and, the morgue being closed, entered Notre Dame. I had hitherto credited Catholic churches with being the most democratic of inst.i.tutions. Hardly were we inside, however, when a priest steamed down upon my companions.

"Sortez de suite!" he commanded. "Get out! How dare you enter the sacred cathedral in blouses!"

The Basques stared at him open-mouthed, now and then nervously wiping their hands on the offending smocks. I pa.s.sed on and they followed, pausing where I paused, to gape at whatever I looked upon. The priest danced shouting about them. They smiled at him gratefully, as if they fancied he were explaining to them the wonders of the edifice. His commands grew vociferous.

"Ces messieurs, sir," I remarked at last, "are Spaniards and do not understand a word of French."

"You then, tell them to get out at once!" he cried angrily.

"You must pardon me, monsieur," I protested, "if I do not presume to appoint myself interpreter to your cathedral."

We continued our way, strolling down one nave to the altar, sauntering back along the other toward the entrance, the priest still prancing about us. In the doorway the Basques turned to thank him by signs for his kindness and backed away devoutedly crossing themselves.

At the Louvre, however, the smock-wearers were halted at the door by two stocky officials, and we wandered on into the Tuileries Gardens. There the quartet balked. These hardy mountaineers, accustomed to trudge all day on steep hillsides behind their burros, were worn out by a few miles of strolling on city pavements. For an hour they sat doggedly in a bench before I could cajole them a few yards further to the Place de la Concorde to board a Seine steamer and return to the Cucina. I left them there and returned alone to while away the afternoon among my old haunts in the Latin Quarter.

Soon after dark the razorless son of Italy took us once more in tow and, climbing to the imperial of an omnibus, we rolled away through the brilliant boulevards to the gare St. Lazare. Here was a.s.sembled an army of emigrants male and female, of all ages and various distances from their last soaping. In due time we were admitted to the platform. A third-cla.s.s coach marked "Cherbourg" stood near at hand. I stepped upon the running-board to open a door. A station official caught me by the coat-tail with an oath and a violence that would have landed me on the back of my head but for my grip on the door handle. Being untrained to such treatment, I thrust out an alpargata-shod foot mule-fashion behind me. The official went to sit down dejectedly on the further edge of the platform. By and by he came back to shake his fist in my face. I spoke to him in his own tongue and he at once subsided, crying:

"Tiens! I thought you were one of those animals there."

We were finally stuffed into four cars, so close we were obliged to lie all night with our legs in one another's laps. The weather was arctic, and we slept not a wink. Early in the morning we disentangled moody and silent in Cherbourg. Another unshaven agent took charge of my companions' baggage with the rest, promising it should be returned the moment they were aboard ship. I clung skeptically to my bundle. We were herded together in a tavern and served coffee and bread, during the administration of which the agent collected our tickets and any proof that we had ever possessed them, and disappeared. The day was wintry cold. All the morning we marched shivering back and forth between the statue of Napoleon and the edge of the beach, the teeth of the south-born Basques chattering audibly. At noon we jammed our way into the tavern again for soup, beef and poor cider, and were given rendezvous at two at one of the wharves.

By that hour all were gathered. It was after four, however, when a tender tied up alongside. A man stepped forth with an armful of tickets and began croaking strange imitations of the names thereon. I heard at last a noise that sounded not altogether unlike my own name and, no one else chancing to forestall me, marched on board to reclaim my credentials. A muscular arm thrust me on through a pa.s.sageway in which a Frenchman in uniform caught me suddenly by the head and turned up my eyelids with a sort of stiletto. Before I could double a fist in protest another arm pushed me on. At six a signal ran up, we steamed out through the breakwater, and were soon tumbling up the gangway of the steamer _New York_. At the top another doctor lay in wait, but forewarned, I flung open my pa.s.sport, and flaunting it in his face, stepped unmolested on deck.

Some four hundred third-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers had boarded the steamer in England, and no small percentage of the berths were already occupied.