Part 50

The machine reminded me at first glance of a fire-extinguisher; then of some appliance used by miners to hold a supply of oxygen. One part of me wished to know what the instrument was; the other preferred to remain in ignorance, lest the explanation should prove too commonplace. But Waring had all my curiosity, and none of my scruples; so he asked a question with a gesture more intelligible than his Spanish; and just as I had feared, the weird union of reservoirs and nozzles was no more than a contrivance for spraying vines to protect them from phylloxera.

As always, we brought the fascinations of the Cherub to bear upon the crowd, as one trains the latest gun upon the enemy; and his crooning brought out facts which made Dick think it high time he got things into shape, and his motor service to running. It seemed that once upon a time a good road had been made from Bailen to Linares, but the road was crossed by a river; and when the masonry supports for a bridge had been built, it turned out that girders had been forgotten. Somehow, it was nobody’s place to jog anybody else’s memory, and there the matter had ended, so long ago that grass and flowers had sprouted among the futile stones.

It appeared the most natural thing in the world to the people of Bailen, who were accustomed to ford the river, when they wanted to cross, with horses; but though the weather had been dry for the last few days, the recent torrents which had fallen in the mountains, still swelled the volume of water to such a height that it might “put out the fire in the automobile.”

I was glad to hear this, because if it would put out our fire, it would put out Carmona’s; and as he was prudent in matters concerning his car, he would probably have stopped at Andujar; thus fate would again bring me near to Monica, despite our promise.

The main reason for going to Linares was because the Cherub believed there was a fair hotel, built to accommodate Englishmen collected for the lead-mining; therefore it was without regret that we turned the Gloria to follow the carretera to Cordoba.

Our advisers ran after us with a warning to avoid the rough cobbles of Bailen by taking the ronda which skirts the town on its left. So slowly, in dusk that blossomed blue as the myrtle flower, we passed round outside the town, regained the high road, leaping at speed into a world of wide, silvery spaces and mystery of violet hollows, diving into the deep valley of the swollen river, and rejoicing in a hard surface of good macadam for fifteen miles or more.

Thus we arrived at Andujar, the lights of our great acetylene lamps (lit before the sky turned from opal to amethyst) prying into dark doorways and windows as Röntgen rays pry through flesh to bone.

In the white glare, pretty girls in doorways looked like actresses in a costume play, waiting in the wings to “go on.” But no yells of a stage mob ever were so realistic as those of the unrehearsed band who howled over my poor Gloria as she deposited her passengers at the fonda; and Ropes and I pushed her through a wall of human beings to a stable-garage, where her flywheel gushed a protest of fiery sparks on the high stone step of entrance.

The fonda was passable; but Carmona and his party were not there; neither were they anywhere else in Andujar, as we made it our business to discover; and we guessed that the grey car must after all have ventured to Linares.

As it had vanished, we were free to start when we chose next morning. So we chose an early hour, flying over good roads through a land embroidered with the scarlet of poppies, the blue of gentian, the pink of clover, and gold of buttercups, stitched in with the silver of little running streams.

“ ‘Give us bread and give us bulls,’ is the cry of this country,” said the Cherub, greeting with joyous glances each feature of his loved Andalucia.

“It sounds like a beef sandwich,” Dick reflected aloud; but Pilar reproached him for flippancy. “You mustn’t make jokes about bread in Andalucia!” she exclaimed. “And it’s called a sin ever to throw away a crumb. Because it’s the gift of Heaven, if you drop a bit you must pick it up and apologize by kissing it.”

“Why not eat it instead?” asked Dick.

“You can do that afterwards. And if bread’s made with holes in it, you must stand the holey side up, because the spirit of God enters through the holes to bless you.”

“I thought only olives were sacred in Andalucia,” said Dick, staring away over enormous tracts of the silver-grey trees growing out of copper soil, waving as far as the eye could follow, to the floating line of ethereal blue mountains.

“They’re sacred, too,” assented Pilar. “Did you know, in the old days they used to be sold only for gold, gold carried on mule back in great bags, and exchanged on the spot, for the trees—so many for so much? We have olives at our place, and they’re gathered in such a nice old-fashioned way; papa doesn’t care for new ways, even if they make a little more money. It’s pretty to watch. I should like you to see it, only—Señor Waring doesn’t like old-fashioned things.”

“I like making the ‘little more money,’ I’m afraid,” Dick confessed.

“Sometimes I like money too—when I want to buy anything. At other times I don’t care. Lately I’ve been saving up. I’ve got one thousand nine hundred pesetas.”

“Good gracious!” laughed Dick, “are you going to buy a bull-farm with such a gigantic sum?”

“Funny you should have said that. I’m going to buy one bull. He’s the only possession of the Duke of Carmona’s that I want, and I want him so much that I’ve sacrificed oh,—I can’t remember how many Paris hats, and shoes, and silk petticoats, and pretty dresses to get him, with all my own money! The worst of it is, he’ll never know about the hats and things.”

Dick was looking interested now.

“What in the name of goodness will you do with him when you get him?” he inquired.

“Save him,” said the girl.

“From what?”

“From the bull-ring. Oh, he’s a toro bravo, is Vivillo, a heart of gold. Not the most famous torero in Spain shall pierce it. I’ve loved him for four years, since he was a baby at his mother’s side, and Rafael Calmenare used to take me to visit him; loved him better even than Corcito, and all this time I’ve been saving up to buy him before he’s of the age for a corrida. Now I’ve enough, or nearly, and there aren’t many weeks to waste, for soon he’ll be five; and already he has the strength and courage of three bulls, my Vivillo! I long to see him again—long for the day when I can put my arms round his great neck, and say, ‘Hermanito, you’re mine!’ ”

“Your arms round his neck!” gasped Dick. “A fighting bull! You’re joking. Say you mean an Irish bull, and put me out of misery.”

“He’s a true Spanish grandee of a bull, and my arms have been round his neck often,” said Pilarcita.

“Then he can’t be very fierce.”