At Santa Elena we were in a Spain I had not seen. At La Carolina we burst into a world fair and fertile as the Garden of Eden; and I remembered the Moorish legend that Heaven is built on the blue that hangs over Andalucía.
Hedges of aloe brandished zincen swords and darts; cacti sprawled and leered along the roadside; set in the vivid green of ripening grain, olive groves seemed carved from jade; or the bare rosy shoulders of sloping hillsides turned by contrast their pale tints to tarnished silver. Vines with young gold leaves trailed the purple earth; avenues of acacias dripped perfumes; and as the sun leaned towards the west, the quivering pink light on violet [pg 196]mountains gave to Andalucía the vivid, almost violent colouring one sees in sensational posters.
Each girl we passed wore a bright flower shining star-like through the black cloud of her hair. The men had discarded the fur-trimmed Louis XI caps for the broad-brimmed, grey sombreros de Cordoba, and the horses or mules were harnessed with gay splashes of red and blue colour, and bobbing tassels.
We had talked of Linares, the lead-mining town, as a halting-place for the night, as we were pledged not to track down the Lecomte; and on the outskirts of Bailen, as twilight fell, the Gloria was brought to a sudden stop in the midst of a pulsating crowd, that we might ask the way.
If we aroused their curiosity, they piqued us to the same emotion, for most of the men, and there were hundreds, not only wore upon their legs a kind of divided pinafore, but carried on their backs an apparatus which would have excited wonder in any other than this fairy country.
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 [pg 197]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.