A PREHISTORIC WEIR.
CHAPTER VII
Mountain philosophy—A Rembrandt mother and child—Egyptian cotton fields—The Khalif and the cañeria—My lodging in a bakery—Embarrassing hospitality—An Arabic banner—Subterranean reservoirs—The Way of the Cross.
It was pitch dark, and the sky was clouded when we started from Villamartín, and the creaking and jolting of the crazy vehicle down the sharp slope from the town to the bridge over the Guadalete would have brought my heart into my mouth had I not been too tired and sleepy to care what happened. Rosario smiled at my terrors. Being a Serrana (mountain woman) by birth, she was not in the least alarmed when the diligence seemed to be diving head-foremost to perdition. “Even if we upset,” she said, “we should come to no harm, for the road was so narrow and the banks so steep that we could not fall far.” She also told me that there was a much better road on the other side, but as we were starting late and were a light load, the driver, an old acquaintance of hers, had chosen a short cut which in winter is a water-course.
Protected by the Providence which looks after fools, we presently landed with a final bone-shaking jerk on the high road, and thence proceeded for several miles in comparative comfort, so much so indeed that we all three went to sleep, and the boy so soundly that he hardly woke till we got within hail of his native village: for this is the King’s highway, and well looked after, as are all of its class, by Government road-menders. I, however, was roused by a stop and voices at a wayside venta, a peasant drinking-place with a deep porch and vine-bowered poles set up in front to give shelter from the sun. Finding that we were to be there ten minutes, while the driver refreshed himself with aguardiente (his offer of which, as it is a fierce spirit largely made in its cheaper forms from potatoes, I politely declined), I got down to warm my chilled limbs by movement, for we were now pretty high up and the air was cold.
Behind us, already a long way off, the lights of Villamartín still twinkled as gaily as if the night were yet young. The black clouds had broken, and the young moon stuck one slender horn out from their midst, while near at hand a patch of burning weeds cast a Rembrandtesque glow on a handsome young woman seated before a choza built of bamboos and maize stalks, with an infant at her breast. One wondered why in the world she was awake and up at four in the morning, but a voice at my elbow explained it:—
“Señora, por Dios, una perilla pa’ pan!” [“Lady, for God’s sake a little dog (½d.) for bread!”]
The ubiquitous beggar, in this case a ragged child eight or nine years old, was on the watch for a possible penny from some weary traveller who might give the coin in order to be freed from the unmusical professional whine.