Spanish Highways and Byways Part 2

"Then may G.o.d take care of you!"

"And of you!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLAYING AT BULL-FIGHT]

But the wild-haired, jet-eyed gypsy girl from the Albaicin is impervious to mirth and untouched by courtesy. She would not do us the honor of believing our word, even when we were telling the truth.

"Five _centimos_ to buy me a scarlet ribbon! Five _centimos_!"

"Not to-day, excuse me. I have no change."

"Hoh! You have change enough. Look in your little brown bag and see."

"I have no change."

"Then give me a _peseta_. Come, now, a whole _peseta_!"

"But why should I give you a _peseta_?"

The girl stares like an angry hawk.

"But why shouldn't you?" Darting away, she hustles together a group of toddlers, hardly able to lisp, and drives them on to the attack.

"Beg, Isabelita! Beg of the lady, little Conception! Beg, Alfonsito!

Beg, beg, beg! Beg five _centimos_, ten _centimos_! Beg a _peseta_ for us all!"

And out pop the tiny palms, and the babble of baby voices makes a pleading music in the air. It is for such as these that the little brown bag has learned to carry _dulces_.

Before the month was over we had, in a slow, grippe-chastened fas.h.i.+on, "done our Baedeker." We had our favorite courts and corridors in the magical maze of the Moorish palace; we knew the gardens and fountains of the _Generalife_, even to that many-centuried cypress beneath whose shade the Sultana Zoraya was wont to meet her Abencerrage lover; our fortunes had been told in the gypsy caves of the Albaicin; we had visited the stately Renaissance cathedral where, in a dim vault, the "Catholic Kings," Ferdinand and Isabella, take their royal rest; we had made a first acquaintance with the paintings of the fire-tempered Granadine, Alonso Cano, and paid our dubious respects to the convent of Cartuja, with its over-gorgeous ornament and its horrible pictures of Spanish martyrdoms inflicted by that "devil's bride," Elizabeth of England. We had explored the parks and streets of the strange old city, where we possessed, according to the terms of Spanish hospitality, several houses; but better than the clamorous town we liked our own wall-girdled height, with its songful wood of English elms, planted by the Duke of Wellington, its ever murmuring runlets of clear water, its jessamines and myrtles, its Arabian Nights of mosque and tower, and its far outlook over what is perhaps the most entrancing prospect any hill of earth can show. The sunset often found us leaning over the ivied wall beneath the _Torre de la Vela_, that bell-tower where the first cross was raised after the Christian conquest, gazing forth from our trellised garden-nook on a vast panorama of gray city all quaintly set with arch and cupola, of sweeping plain with wealth of olive groves, vineyards, orange orchards, pomegranates, aloes, and cypresses, bounded by glistening ranks of snow-cloaked mountains. From the other side of the Alhambra plateau, the fall is sheer to the silver line of the Darro. Across the river rises the slope of the Albaicin, once the chosen residence of Moorish aristocracy, but now dotted over, amid the thickets of cactus and p.r.i.c.kly pear, with whitewashed entrances to gypsy caves. Beyond all s.h.i.+ne the resplendent summits of the great Sierras.

Yet it is strange how homely are many of the memories that spring to life in me at the name of the Alhambra,--decorous donkeys, laden with water-jars, trooping up the narrow footpath to the old Fountain of Tears, herds of goats clinging like flies to the upright precipice, a lurking peasant darting out on his wife as she pa.s.ses with a day's earnings hidden in her stocking and holding her close, with laughter and coaxing, while he persistently searches her clothing until he finds and appropriates that copper h.o.a.rd, and our own cheery little house-drudge was.h.i.+ng our linen in a wayside rivulet and singing like a bird as she rubs and pounds an unfortunate handkerchief between two haphazard stones:--

"I like to live in Granada, It pleases me so well When I am falling asleep at night To hear the _Vela_ bell."

There is the proud young mother, too, whom we came upon by chance over behind the Tower of the Princesses, where her pot of _puchero_ was bubbling above a miniature bonfire, while the velvet-eyed baby boy sucked his thumb in joyous expectation. She often made us welcome, after that, to her home,--a dingy stone kitchen and bedroom, unfurnished save for pallet, a few cooking-utensils, a chest or two, and, fastened to the wall, a gaudy print of _La Virgen de las Angustias_, the venerated _Patrona_ of Granada. But this wretched abode, the remains of what may once have been a palace, opened on a lordly pleasure-garden with walls inlaid with patterns of rainbow tiles, whose broken edges were hidden by rose bushes. There were pedestals and even fragments of images in this wild Eden, jets of sparkling water and walks of variegated marble. In the course of the month, English and Spanish callers climbed the hill to us and encompa.s.sed us with kindness, but we still maintained our incorrigible taste for low society and used to hold informal receptions on sunny benches for all the tatterdemalions within sight. Swarthy boys, wearied with much loafing, would thriftily lay aside their cigarettes to favor us with conversation, asking many questions about America, for whose recent action they gallantly declined to hold us responsible. "It was not the ladies that made the war," said these modern cavaliers of the Alhambra.

Their especial spokesman was a shambling orphan lad of some fifteen summers, with shrewd and merry eyes. Nothing pleased him better than to give an ornamental hitch to the shabby, bright-colored scarf about his thin, brown throat, and proceed to expound the political situation.

"You admire the Alhambra? I suppose you have no palaces in America because your Government is a republic. That is a very good thing. Our Government is the worst possible. All the loss falls on the poor. All the gain goes to the rich. But there are few rich in Spain. America is the richest country of all the world. When America fought us it was as a rich man, fed and clothed, fighting a poor man weak from famine. And the rich man took from the poor man all that he had. Spain has nothing left--nothing."

"Oh, don't say that! Spain has the Alhambra, and beautiful churches, beautiful pictures."

"Can one eat churches and pictures, my lady?"

"And a fertile soil. What country outblooms Andalusia?"

His half-shod foot kicked the battle-trampled earth of the immortal hill contemptuously.

"Soil! Yes. All the world has soil. It serves to be buried in."

This budding politician graced us with his company one Sunday afternoon, when we went down into Granada to see a religious procession. Our Lady of Lourdes, escorted by a distinguished train of ecclesiastical and civic dignitaries, with pomp of many s.h.i.+ning lights and sonorous instruments, with peal of church bells and incongruous popping of fireworks, pa.s.sed through extended ranks of candle-bearing wors.h.i.+ppers, along thronged streets, where every balcony was hung with the national red and yellow, to the Church of Mary Magdalene. There the sacred guest was entertained with a concert, and thence conducted, with the same processional state, amid the same reverent salutations of the mult.i.tude, back to her own niche. Our youthful guide showed himself so devout on this occasion, kneeling whenever the image, borne aloft in a glory of flowers and tapers, pa.s.sed us, and gazing on every feature of the pageant with large-eyed adoration, that we asked him, as we climbed the hill again, if he would like to be a priest. But he shrugged his shoulders. "There are better Christians in Spain than the priests," he answered.

The son of the house, Don Pepe, a young man of five and twenty, who usually attended us on any difficult excursion, was also frankly outspoken in his disapproval of the clergy. He could hardly hold his countenance in pa.s.sing a Franciscan friar. "There walks the ruin of Spain," he muttered once, with bitter accent, turning to scowl after the bareheaded, brown-frocked figure so common in Granada streets. We had, indeed, our own little grudge against the friars, for they were the only men of the city who forced us off the narrow sidewalks out into the rough and dirty road. All other Granadines, from dandies to gypsies, yielded us the strip of pavement with ready courtesy, but the friars, three or four in Indian file, would press on their way like graven images and drive us to take refuge among the donkeys.

This escort of ours, formally a Catholic, was no more a lover of State than of Church. He was eager to get to work in the world and, finding no foothold, charged up his grievance against the Government. He was firmly persuaded that Madrid had sold the Santiago and Manila victories to Was.h.i.+ngton for sums of money down,--deep down in official pockets. But his talk, however angry, would always end in throwing out the hands with a gesture of despair.

"But what use in revolutions? Spain is tired--tired of tumult, tired of bloodshed, tired of deceit and disappointment. A new government would only mean the old dogs with new collars. We, the people, are always the bone to be gnawed bare. What use in anything? Let it go as G.o.d wills."

The Silvela and Polavieja ministry came in during our stay at Granada, and the Liberal and Republican chorus against what was known as the Reactionary Government swelled loud. "It means the yoke of the Jesuits," growled our burly host. Our Alhambra dream suffered frequent jars from these ign.o.ble confusions of to-day. When we were musing comfortably on the melancholy fortunes of Boabdil, a cheap newspaper would be thrust before our eyes with an editorial headed "Boabdil Sagasta." It is always best to do what one must. Since we could not be left in peace to the imagination of plumy cavaliers, stars of Moslem and Christian chivalry, who sowed this mount so thick with glorious memories, we turned our thoughts to the poor soldiers from Cuba, especially during the week throughout which they paraded the cities of Spain in rag-tag companies under rude flags with the ruder motto: "_Hungry Repatriados_." Their appearance was so woful that it became a by-word. A child, picking up from a gutter one day a mud-stained, dog-eared notebook, cried gleefully, "It's a _repatriado_." There was no glamour here, but the courage and sacrifice, the love and anguish, held good.

Granada had borne her share in Spain's last war sorrow. So many of her sons were drafted for the Antilles that her anger against America waxed hot. A few months before our arrival every star-spangled banner that could be hunted out in shop or residence was trampled and burned in the public squares. The Was.h.i.+ngton Irving Hotel hastened to take down its sign, and even the driver of its omnibus was sternly warned by the people to erase those offensive American names from his vehicle on pain of seeing it transformed into a chariot of fire. A shot, possibly accidental, whistled through the office of the English consul, who was given to understand, in more ways than one, that Spain made little difference between "the cloaked enemy" and the foe in the field. Meanwhile, month after month, the recruits were marched to the station, and the City Fathers, who came in all munic.i.p.al dignity to bid the lads G.o.dspeed, were so overwhelmed by the weeping of the women that they forgot the cream of their speeches.

Among the new tales of Spanish valor told us on the Alhambra hill was this:--

When lots were drawn for military service, one blithe young scapegrace found in his hand a fortunate high number, but, walking away in fine feather over his luck, he met the mother of a friend of his, sobbing wildly as she went. Her son had been drafted, and the two hundred dollars of redemption money was as far beyond her reach as those dazzling crests of the Sierra Nevada are above the lame beggar at the Alhambra gate. Then the kindly fellow, troubled by her grief and mindful of the fact that, orphan as he was, his own parting would be at no such cost of tears, offered to serve in her boy's stead. Her pa.s.sion of grat.i.tude could not let his service go all unrecompensed.

Poorest of the poor, she went about among her humble friends, lauding his deed, until she had collected, _peseta_ by _peseta_, the sum of sixteen dollars, which she thrust into his hands to buy comforts for the campaign. But another sobbing mother sought him out. He had saved her neighbor's son; would he not save hers? Laughing at her logic and moved by her faith in him, he answered: "I am only one man, senora. I cannot go in place of two. But here are sixteen dollars. If you can find a subst.i.tute at such a price, the money is yours."

Sixteen dollars is a fortune to hunger and nakedness, and the subst.i.tute was found. As the year wore on those two mothers did not let the city forget its light-hearted hero, and a great a.s.sembly gathered at the station to honor his return. A remnant of his comrades descended from the train, but as for him, they said, he had died in Cuba of the fever months before.

His was no poetic death like that of the Abencerrages. Happy Abencerrages! They knew the Alhambra in the freshness of her beauty.

Their last uplifted glances looked upon the most exquisite ceilings in the world. Their blood left immortal stains on the marble base of the fountain. But this young Spaniard, in his obscure Cuban grave, only one out of the eighty thousand, will promptly be forgotten. _No importa._ There must be something better than glory for the man who does more than his duty.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE MOSQUE OF CORDOVA]

IV

A FUNCTION IN GRANADA

"O Love Divine, Celestial Purity, Pity my cries!

My soul is p.r.o.ne before a clouded throne.

Let thy keen light arise, Pierce this obscurity And free my dream-bound eyes!"

--_Ganivet's Last Poem._

The civilization of Spain, streaked as it is with Oriental barbarisms, belated and discouraged as the end of the nineteenth century finds it, is still in many respects finer than our own. In everything that relates to grace and charm of social intercourse, to the dignified expression of reverence, compa.s.sion, and acknowledgment, Spain puts us to the blush. I was especially touched in Granada by the whole-souled sympathy and veneration with which the city rendered public honors to one of its sons, Angel Ganivet, who died in the preceding winter, a poet hardly thirty.

Although I had glanced over obituary notices of this Spanish writer in the Paris papers, I had but a vague idea of his work and life, and sought, before the night of the memorial ceremonies, for further information. I appealed, first of all, to our table waiter, whose keen black eyes instantly turned sad and tender.

"_Pobre! Pobre!_ He threw himself into the river at Riga, in Russia, where he was consul. It was at the close of the war. And he such a genius! So young! So true a Spaniard! But all Granada will be at the theatre. He left his play to Granada, asking that it be seen here first of all. I have never read his books, but I have met him in the streets, and lifted my hat to him for a wise _caballero_ who cared greatly for Spain."

My next appeal was to our kind neighbor, the English consul, who a.s.sured me laughingly that he, like myself, was vainly ransacking the few bookstores of Granada for Ganivet's works.

"The first time I ever heard the name," he added, "was some three or four years ago, when I noticed an old gentleman standing often in front of my house, and gazing at the British coat-of-arms above my door. He told me one day when I drew him into talk that he had a nephew, Angel Ganivet, roaming in foreign lands. 'But he does not forget his old uncle,' said he. 'I always receive my little pension prompt to the day, and so I like to look at the foreign s.h.i.+elds about the city, and remember my nephew, far away, who remembers me.' That was a trifle, of course, but it gave me a kindly feeling for the young fellow, and I'm sorry he came to such an end. They found him in the river, you know. I dare say it was suicide, and likely enough the defeat of Spain had its share in causing his despondency; but n.o.body knows. He was a zealous patriot, I understand, and all Granada seems to take his death to heart."

My next authority was an aged Granadine, a man of letters; but he had not read Ganivet's books.