“Spain at last, Spain of the songs I have sung, the pictures on fans and guava boxes I have collected,” Patsy burbled joyously.
“Quando los matadores matan en la corrida, van a la plaza bonitas con flores y abanicos.” (When the matadors are killing in the bull ring, come the pretty girls with flowers and fans.)
Not far from the plaza, as we were passing a house of quality, with seraphic green gargoyles, Don Jaime halted and looked sharply across the way. A correct young man, in a rakish gray sombrero, stood at the opposite corner waiting, not loitering like us; it was evident that he was here with a purpose.
“Behold the novio!” said the Don; “I feared he dead or married.”
Patsy asked who the gentleman with the varnished boots might be, who was gazing at an upper window with a white blind; he, apparently, did not see us. The Don explained that he was a novio (fiancé) haciendo el oso (doing the bear). He had heard it said that every afternoon, for five years, this faithful lover had stood outside the window of his beloved for exactly three hours!
“Is he mad?”
“Is love lunatics? Then must be vasty, crazy palaces by all Spain. He follow one antique custom, what we call ‘cosas de España.’”
Sunset found us far from the town on a lonely path skirting the coast. We looked through the ragged, blue cactus hedge at the beautiful view; watched the flame kindle and flash out from the lighthouse on Isla Verde; the ferry boat, Elvira, pass on her last trip from Gibraltar to Algeciras. A few steps further on the path brought us out upon a bold headland where, out of sight of the town, an old house sloughed and sagged on its foundations. A large fig tree grew on one side of the porch, a cork tree on the other; a tame lamb lifted its head from nibbling the grass and bleated a long “ba-a-a.”
“Picturesque, isn’t it?” said Patsy. His gaze, idly roving over the landscape, concentrated and grew intent as the door opened, and a girl in a red dress, with a yellow handkerchief over her head, came out of the old house. It was as if a rough oyster shell had opened and shown the perfect pearl it held.
“I say, don’t you think it wicked to be so handsome?” groaned Patsy.