Four Months Afoot in Spain Part 3

I climbed the embankment not without misgiving. Sure enough, a track there was, beside the broad-gauge rails, covered with cinders and scarred with many imprints of donkey hoofs. A mile along it demonstrated how poor a walking kit is even a half-empty suitcase. I sat down to take stock of the contents. In the jumble was a blue flannel shirt past its prime. I fished out thread and needle and sewed a Jack-Tar seam across the garment below the armpits, amputated sleeves and shoulders with a few, slashes, and behold! a knapsack that might bear my burdens through all the kingdom of Spain, and hold its own in any gathering of shoulder-packed wayfarers. When I had stuffed my possessions into it there was still room to spare for such odds and ends as find their way into the baggage of the least acquisitive of travelers. Then pitching the suitcase spread-eagle over the bordering hedge, I cut a stick in a neighboring thicket and struck off again at the regular stride so indispensable to any true enjoyment of tramping.

Night fell soon after. A fall it was indeed; no half-hearted settling down of gloom as in our northern zone, but a descendant flood of obscurity that left the eyes blinking in dismay. To right and left, where had been rolling uplands and heathered fields sharp-cut in smallest detail, nothing--a sea of inky blackness; and ahead, the stony-blind unknown. The cinder path held firm, but only a foot rubbing along the rail guided my steps, until such time as sight resumed its leadership.

An hour or more I marched on into the summer night. Then out of the darkness ahead stole a feeble point of light, an increasing murmur of human voices, and the end of the first day's tramp was before me.

Beside the way a stone building stood open, an oil torch twilighting a cobble-floored room heaped at one end with a Spanish grocer's wares. An unshaven man of fifty, a red handkerchief bound brigand-fashion about his head, bulked forward through an inner doorway.

"You furnish lodgings?"

"Si, senor; and your burro?"

"I am walking. Is supper to be had?"

"Claro, hombre! Choose from the baskets and the senora shall cook it for you in a twinkling."

All through the following day the path continued parasitic to the railway. The roadbed was thickly covered with crushed stone, with nowhere a hint of the existence of section-gangs. On either hand rolled away a landscape stamped with the features of an African ancestry, all but concealed at times by the cactus-trees of a willow's height that hedged the track. At rare intervals a stuccoed station serving some hamlet hidden among the hills found standing-room on the right of way.

An occasional hovel built of field stones frowned down from the crest of a parched hillock. Now and again out of the meeting-place of the rails ahead came jogging a peasant seated sidewise on an a.s.s, to swerve suddenly aside and rattle off down a rocky gorge, singing a high-pitched ballad of Arabic cadence. But these were but bubbles on the surface of a fathomless solitude, though a solitude brilliant with an all-invading sunshine that left no skulking-place for somber moods.

It turned out that the railroad had not been built for the exclusive convenience of pedestrians and donkeys. A bit before noon a rumbling arose out of the north, and no unconscionable time thereafter the daily "expreso" roared by--at a rate close upon fifteen miles an hour. The ticket collector, cigarette in mouth, clambered hand over hand along the running board, in imminent peril of losing his footing--and being obliged to pursue his train to the next station. During the afternoon there pa.s.sed two "mixtos," toy freight trains with a caudal carload of pa.s.sengers. But the speed of these was more reasonable, varying from six to eight miles, with vacations at each station and frequent holidays in the open country.

The sun was still an hour high when I reached the station of San Pablo.

This time the town itself stood in plain sight, pitched on the summit of an oak-grown hill barely a mile from the line. I plunged quickly down into the intervening valley.

It was a checker-board place, perhaps only a century or two old; certainly no relic of the Moor, for there was not a sign of shop or market in all its extent. Only in the last street did I catch sight of one of its inhabitants, dining in solitary state in the center of a bare room. He stared at me a long moment when I halted before the immense open window to inquire for an inn.

"San Pablo, senor," he answered at last, "is a private town owned by the mining company. There is no inn."

I was turning away when he continued:

"But step inside and we shall see what the ama can arrange for you."

He was, as I had guessed, a Frenchman, an expert employed in the mines.

The Spanish, however, in which he addressed the _ama_ was faultless.

"Ah, Don Victor!" protested that matron, "How can I give posada, having no license from the government? And without the permission of Don Jose--"

"Pepete," said the Gaul to an urchin peering in upon us, "ask Don Jose to have the goodness to step over. He is manager of the mines," he continued, "and so alcalde and potentate of San Pablo."

It would have been a misfortune, indeed, to have journeyed through Andalusia without making the acquaintance of Don Jose. He burst in upon us a moment later; a very hippopotamus of a man, dressed in baggy trousers, slouch hat, and alpaca jacket. Unfortunately his arrival coincided with my announcement that I was walking to Cordoba--the whole itinerary would have been too strong meat for Latin consumption--and his native geniality was for a time overshadowed by astonishment at my extraordinary means of locomotion. I had all but finished the meal set for me in an adjoining room when the pair entered and sat down beside me.

"Senor," began the manager, in what was meant to be a whisper, "you cannot walk to Cordoba. It is forty leagues."

"How much money have you?" put in the Frenchman.

"Er--I have something over seven pesetas," I answered.

"Bueno! Bonisima!" cried the alcalde, patting me on the shoulder. "Don Victor and I will add the rest and I shall go with you to the station to buy the ticket--in the morning."

Great, I reflected, is the infant mortality among generous resolutions in the gray of dawn, and accordingly held my peace.

Having settled my future to his own satisfaction, Don Jose linked an arm in one of mine and plunged out into the night.

"Your bed is waiting for you in your own house," he said with Spanish formality. "You have only to say the word."

The first syllable of which I had not found time to say before we marched full front into San Pablo's barrack-like cafe. A roar of greeting sounded through the dense cloud of cigarette smoke: "Buenas tardes! Don Jose!"

"Buenas, amigos! Que le gusta!" returned my companion, and pushing toward a table with two vacant chairs he continued without a break, "Un ponche, Don Gregario! And you, senor? Anything you may choose, though there is nothing equal to ponche. Verdad, Rufo?" Then as I opened my lips to express a preference, "Si! si! Don Gregario! Dos ponches!"

The room was filled with a hundred bronze-tinted miners over wine and cards. Don Jose was the industrial autocrat of every man present, yet one would have fancied him rather a brother or cousin, so free was the intercourse from haughtiness on the one hand and servility on the other.

Miner and manager addressed each other by their given names, shouted at each other in friendly dispute, thumped each other fraternally on the back. Despite all which one felt absolute a.s.surance that when labor again caught up its pick the manager's word would command instant obedience.

The landlord, flushed with the exertion of their concoction, soon set the incomparable beverages before us. With the alacrity of a man who will have no shadow of debt hanging over his head, Don Jose thrust a hand into a pocket of his alpaca and cast on the table three mammoth coppers, the combined value of which was close upon five cents. With the first sip he rolled a cigarette and pushed pouch and papers toward me. Then having introduced me as "Senor Newyorkano," he plunged headlong into the story of my life, addressing not merely the a.s.sembled miners but whomever else may have been prowling within gunshot of the building. "And to think, amigos," he concluded, "after crossing all the sea el senor should have wandered into San Pablo looking for a posada!"

The company beat their hands on the tables and howled with merriment.

Whatever the uproarious humor of that climax to my adventures, it lost nothing of its poignancy as long as the evening lasted, and served to top off a score of otherwise pointless tales.

My ignorance of the Andalusian game notwithstanding, I had soon taken a hand. The alcalde, consuming uncounted cigarettes, beamed over my shoulder shouting praise of my sagacity each time I cast on the table the card he pointed out. As for "ponche," what the peerless libation lacked in favor with the ma.s.ses it gained in the unswerving fidelity of its sponsor. With clock-like regularity his reverberating voice rang out above the din of revelry: "Don Gregario, un ponche!" In vain did I announce my thirst permanently abated, in vain did I "say the word" or strive at least to take advantage of the free choice offered me. My protest was invariably drowned in the roar of the amended order: "Si, si! Dos ponches, Don Gregario!"

Evening rolled into night, night into morning, and still the clank of copper coins continued. Once I attempted to forestall the diving into that fathomless alpaca by thrusting a hand into my own pocket. My unquenchable host started to his feet with a bellow that seemed to set the very walls vibrating:

"Strangers, senor, cannot spend money in San Pablo! We are a private town!"

The minute hand was nearing the completion of its third lap when a general uprising, subtly instigated by the landlord, swept the carousers into the coal-black night. "My house" was no such regal mansion as befitted an industrial sovereign, an alcalde, and a man of unlimited coppers rolled into one. It was different, to be sure, from the other bare stone dwellings of San Pablo, but only in the wild bachelor disorder that reigned within its four naked walls. In one corner was a mountainous husk mattress. Its mate, alleged my host, lay somewhere buried in the jumble; and he verified the a.s.sertion not long after by dragging it forth. While he was booting this into some resemblance to a bed, I kicked off my shoes and sank into profound slumber.

Don Jose, too, awoke at sunrise. His generosity, however, was but a shadow of its former self. On the descent from the town he listened to my objections to the proposed charity without once proffering a reply.

In the depth of the valley he halted and stared gloomily up at the steep, sun-glazed path to the station observing that Providence after all is the appointed guardian of the foolhardy. I thrust out a hand.

He shook it dejectedly and, bidding me go with G.o.d and remember there is no drink equal to ponche, set out to clamber his way back to the village.

Beyond the curve that swept San Pablo into the past a stream brawled down out of the hills. I climbed a little way up the gorge and came upon a tumbled boulder that had stored up a pool of just the depth for a morning plunge. Further on the railway grew more winding with every mile. The hills increased to mountain spurs, and soon after came the mountains themselves, the parched and rock-tumbled Sierra de Honda, fertile only with the memory of smugglers and intricate pathways. The route led through many long, sombrous tunnels, entrance into which from the blazing sunshine was like the diving into a mountain lake. Where the burrowings ended, the line became still more circuitous, leaping over abysmal, jagged gulleys by ma.s.sive dry bridges.

I fasted all the day; for it was Sunday, and the few station buildings that appeared were deserted. Yet the privation pa.s.sed almost unnoticed.

Were a choice to be made I would willingly sacrifice any day's dinner for the unfailing sunshine of Spain, reinforced by the pleasure of knowing that with the new dawn another unclouded day will begin.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Moorish gate of Ronda]

My night's halt was beneath swaying palm-trees.

Down through a ravine beside the track were scattered a few rambling houses, in one of which I found accommodations. Its owner was a peasant, battered with years, who sat before his dwelling smoking in the cool of evening with his three sons. One of these was a _guardia civil_ who had seen all the provinces of Spain, and whose language in consequence was Spanish. His brothers, on the other hand, spoke the crabbed dialect of Andalusia. I caught the sense of most of their remarks only at the third or forth repet.i.tion, to their ever-increasing astonishment.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A gitana of Granada. In the district of the Alhambra.]

"Hermano," interrupted the guardia once, "you know you do not speak Spanish?"

The speaker fell silent and listened for some time open-mouthed to his brother in uniform.

"Caracoles!" he cried suddenly. "I speak no other tongue than you, brother, except for the fine words you have picked up at las Cortes!"

Which was exactly the difficulty. The "fine" words were of pure Castilian, for which the rural andaluz subst.i.tutes terms left behind by the Moor. Furthermore his speech is guttural, explosive, slovenly, more redolent of Arabic than of Spanish. He is particularly p.r.o.ne to slight the S. His version of "estes senores" is "ete senore." Which is comprehensible; but how shall the stranger guess that "cotoa e' l'

juti'a" is meant to convey the information that "la justicia es costosa?"