“The original inhabitants of Spain—what they call the Iberians—” said the Argentino.
“Where did they come from?” Patsy interrupted.
“Nobody knows; they weren’t Aryans. In the Neolithic Age a very dark race, with long heads, and thick curling hair inhabited the whole Peninsula—”
“I do not propose going back to the beginning of time to-night;” said J. as he shut the window. “That boy’s thirst for information—easily acquired—will get us into trouble yet. Don Jaime comes to-morrow. How will he and this new friend get along?”
I had already asked myself that question.
“Did the norias keep you awake?” Patsy asked at breakfast the next morning. “What we heard last night was not the sighs of ghosts, but the noise of the pumping machines that supply the houses with water!”
Our rooms looked into a walled garden, with flower-beds framed in geometrical designs, surrounded by nice thick box borders. There was a superb syringa in full bloom that looked like ivory and smelt like honey. The jasmines were trained against the wall. The roses were glorious. In an outer court, where the poultry lived, a patriarchal fig-tree shaded a row of old-fashioned wooden beehives. Under a pergola covered by grape-vines stood a tiny house no bigger than a sentry-box; in the house sat Vicente. His voice waked us each morning with a fierce but tremulous cry:
“Andar, Morisco!”
Close to the sentry-box was the noria. Morisco, a tall mule hitched to a pole, and blindfolded so that he should not grow dizzy, walked round and round in a circle, faithfully pumping the water, while Vicente alternately slept and exhorted him to “go!” The red-haired waiter told us Vicente’s story. In his youth he had been head gardener on a Grandee’s estate. For twenty years he had been attached to the hotel. He was now ninety-five years old. A few months before his wife had died, at the age of one hundred. Until then, Vicente had lived at home. Now that there is nobody to cook and wash for him, the proprietor gives him a room in the hotel, his food, his clothes, a little money for cigarettes; for his companion, Morisco.
As we entered the garden, Vicente awoke with a start, lighted a cigarette, and jerked the mule’s bridle.