Spanish Highways and Byways Part 11

It seemed to occur to him, after a little, that even this apology left something to be desired, and he brightened up.

"Wouldn't you like some roses? They sell them here at this station.

There comes a boy now with a nice, big bunch. One _peseta_! I think that's too dear, don't you?"

I hastened to a.s.sent.

"The lady says that's too dear. Seventy-five _centimos_? No. The lady can't pay that. Sixty _centimos_? No. The lady can't afford sixty _centimos_. Fifty _centimos_? No. The lady says fifty _centimos_ is too much. She will take them at forty _centimos_. Here's a half _peseta_. And you must give me back a fat dog."

The boy held back the penny and tried to subst.i.tute a cent.

"Oh, sir, please, sir, forty-five _centimos_! There are two dozen roses here, and all fresh as the dawn. Give me the puppy-dog over."

But the German, who knew how to put even a sharper edge on the inveterate Spanish bargaining, secured for the value of eight cents, instead of twenty, his great bouquet of really beautiful roses, and presented it with as much of a bow as the carriage limits permitted.

"I meant to pay all the time, you know; but one can always make a better trade, in Spain, if it is done in the name of a lady." And he added, with that sudden tact which innate goodness and delicacy give to the most blundering of us mortals, "If you don't like to take them from a stranger for yourself, you will take them as my peace-offering to your country."

I was reminded again of my native land by another fellow-traveller--a Spaniard of the Spaniards, this time, one of the Conservative and Catholic leaders, greeted at the various stations by priests and monks and friars, whose hands he solemnly kissed. This distinguished personage was absorbed in a voluminous type-written ma.n.u.script, from which he occasionally read aloud to the band of political confidants who accompanied him. It was an arraignment of the Liberal Party, and, by way of exposing the errors of the Sagasta government, included a merciless resume of the Spanish naval and military disasters, with elaborate comparisons of the American and Spanish equipments. He was then on his way to join in a consoling pilgrimage to a certain image of Christ, which had been cudgelled by a grief-maddened priest whose dying mother the image had failed to heal.

These surroundings more or less jostled my sixteenth-century dream, but I held to it so stubbornly that, when pyramids of salt began to glimmer like ghosts along the way, and a sweeping curve of lights warned me of our approach to Cadiz, I made a point of seeing as little as possible. It was midnight, but Spanish hours are luckily so late that Don Jose's friends were still at the height of evening sociability and regaled me with alternate showers of sweetmeats and questions. Finally, after many exclamations of horror at the audacity of the trip, all the feminine hospitality of the household lighted me to a chamber whose walls were hung with pictures of martyrs and agonizing saints. Among these I counted five colored representations of Christ opening his breast to display the bleeding heart.

The next morning I promptly took boat to _Puerto de Santa Maria_, embarked on the return steamer, and so at last found myself once more on the Silver Road, entering Cadiz harbor from the sea.

To be sure, the _Montserrat_ was riding proudly in my view, although the wars.h.i.+ps to which she had been used to curtsy in the open roads of Cadiz would never cut those s.h.i.+ning waves again. The waters were as turquoise blue as if they had just come from the brush of an old master, and the towered city rose before us like a crystal castle in the air. Its limited s.p.a.ce, built as it is within great sea walls on an outlying rock, which only a rope of sand moors to the mainland, has necessitated narrow streets and high houses, whose _miradores_, lookouts that everywhere crown the terraced roofs, give this battlemented aspect to the town. One of the most ancient and tragic cities known to time, claiming Hercules for its founder, in turn Phoenician, Carthaginian, Roman, Gothic, Moorish, Spanish, it yet looks fresh as a water-lily. I could have spent another three days in gazing. And this sparkling vision was Spain's _Copa de Plata_, the Silver Cup which has brimmed with the gold and pearls of America, with blood and flame and glory. Its riches have taken to themselves wings, but its high, free spirit and frank gayety abide. Still the Andalusians sing:--

"_Viva_ Cadiz, Silver Cadiz, Whose walls defy the sea, Cadiz of the pretty girls, Of courtesy and glee!

"Good luck to merry Cadiz, As white as ocean spray, And her five and twenty cannon That point Gibraltar way!"

But I am bound to add that the cannon do not look dangerous.

XII

MURILLO'S CHERUBS

"Angels o'er the palm trees flying, Touch their waving fronds to rest.

Bid them give no wind replying.

Jesus sleeps on Mary's breast.

Blessed angels, hold the peeping Branches still as altar-place, For the Holy Child is sleeping Close beneath His Mother's face."

--LOPE DE VEGA.

Spanish love for childhood, and the precocity and winsomeness of Spanish children, impressed me from my first hour in the Peninsula.

"There is no road so level as to be without rough places," and the initial days of my Madrid residence, after my artist comrade had gone back to Paris and the spring salons, might have been a trifle lonely save for baby society. I was living in a delightful Spanish household, but the very excess of courtesy reminded me continually that I was a Yankee and a heretic. As time pa.s.sed, friends.h.i.+p ripened, and it is to-day no empty form of words when I am a.s.sured that I have "my house in Madrid." But at the outset I felt myself not only an American alien, but an Andalusian exile. The "only Court" is such a prosaic contrast to Seville that my impulse was to betake myself with books to the great park of the Buen Retiro, the magnificent gift of Olivares to his royal master, and let the Madrid world, at least the adult portion of it, go by. For while the larger Madrilenos were busy with their own plays of politics, bull-fights, and flirtation, the little ones had happy afternoons in that historic park of many a tragedy, where convents, palaces, and fortifications have all made way for the children's romping ground. Resting on a rustic seat in the leafy shade, with the rich, thrilling notes of the nightingale answering the bell call of the cuckoo from the deeper groves beyond, I could watch these budding Spaniards to heart's content.

It was well to observe them from a distance, however, for their young voices were of the shrillest. Among the boys, an energetic few were developing muscle by tag and leap-frog; more were flying kites, cracking whips, twirling slings, and brandis.h.i.+ng the terrors of pewter swords; while at every turn, beside some flas.h.i.+ng fountain or beneath some spreading oak, I would come upon a group of urchins playing _al toro_ with the cheap, gaudy capes of red and yellow manufactured for the children's sport. The girls were skipping rope, rolling hoop, teaching one another the steps of endless dances, and whispering momentous secrets in statue-guarded grottos, or thickets of flowering shrubs, or whatsoever safe, mysterious nook their fluttering search could find.

Here was a school out for its daily airing, a pretty procession of rainbow-clad little damsels, marshalled by the black-veiled figures of graceful nuns, and pacing with all decorum down a crowded avenue; but the moment the troop turned into some sequestered by-path, how it would break into a s.h.i.+mmering confusion of b.u.t.terflies, darting hither and thither in those jewel-green lights and sea-green shadows, the nuns casting their dignity to the winds and scampering with the swiftest! Wandering after I would come, perhaps, upon an open s.p.a.ce where the smaller boys were gathered, delicate little lads riding horse-headed sticks, digging with mimic spades, and tossing big, soft, red and yellow b.a.l.l.s, while mothers and nurses sat about in circle on the stone benches, calling out sharp-toned cautions to their respective charges.

And everywhere in the park were toddling babies, clasping dolls, tugging at gay balloons, dragging wooden donkeys on wheels, and tumbling over live puppies. They were pale, engaging, persistent little creatures, with a true Spanish inability to learn from experience. I saw one aristocratic cherub, white as snow from feathered cap to ribboned shoes, take ten successive slappings because he muddied his hands. The angry nurse would make a s.n.a.t.c.h for the naughty fingers, roughly beat off the dirt, and cuff the culprit soundly. His proud little mouth would tremble; he would wink hard and fast, but there was not a tear to be seen, not a cry to be heard, and no sooner had her peasant clutch released him than back went the baby hands, grubbing deep into the mire. A gorgeous civil guard finally distracted her attention, and the last view I had of the child showed him blissfully squatted in the very middle of a puddle, splas.h.i.+ng with arms and legs.

White is almost the universal wear of the prattling age in the Buen Retiro, although now and then some lily fairy would flit by with saffron sash and harmonious saffron stockings, or costume similarly touched by pink or blue. The Scotch plaids, too, were in favor as sashes, and at rare intervals I encountered a tot sensibly attired in stout plaid frock. But the white of this childish mult.i.tude was thickly flecked with mourning suits, complete to bits of black gloves and even to jet studs in the collars. Among the sad sights of the Retiro was an epileptic boy, led and half supported between two sweet-faced, youthful ladies, both in widow's crepe, who screened him with caresses as his fit took him and he foamed and screamed in piteous helplessness. This pathetic trio, ever seeking seclusion, was ever followed by a retinue of idlers, who, for all their intrusive staring, were silent and sympathetic.

The nursemaids formed not the least attractive feature of the kaleidoscopic picture. Most wore white caps, fastened with gilded pins or knots of rose or russet; but the nurses counted the best, from the mountain province of Santander, were distinguished by bright-colored handkerchiefs twisted about the head. Here, as in the _elysees_, baby-wagons are seldom seen. The nurses carry in arms the black-eyed infants, who bite away at their coral necklaces quite like little Yankees.

But Spanish traits soon declare themselves. In the centre of the park is an artificial pond, where lads in their first teens, too old for play, lean languidly over the iron railings, and, while they throw crumbs to the flock of forlorn-looking ducks or watch the dip of the red oar-blades that impel the pleasure boats, brag of their amorous adventures and exchange the scandal of the _Prado_. Sometimes their love chat is of sweeter tenor, for many of these schoolboys have already spoken their betrothal vows, which the Church will not let them lightly break. Spaniards often marry under twenty-one, and even a recent wedding in Madrid, where neither bride nor bridegroom had reached the fifteenth year, was hardly thought amiss, in view of the fact that there was parental money to maintain them.

And why had the stately city of Valladolid been under a reign of terror for half the week just past, with shutters up, doors barred, and women and children kept at home for safety, while bands of young men swayed in b.l.o.o.d.y struggle through her famous squares and streets, but because a cadet and a student must needs lose heart to the same maid? Cupid, not Santiago, is the patron saint of Spain. And Cupid, for all his mischief, has some very winning ways. Our boyish sentimentalists of the Buen Retiro, for instance, easily fall into song, and the native melodies, always with something wild and Oriental in their beat, ring across the little lake into the woods beyond till the birds take up the challenge and every tree grows vocal.

One afternoon, on my way to the park, I bought from a roadside vender a handful of small, gaudily bound children's books, and had no sooner found what I fondly supposed was a sequestered seat than a tumult of little folks surrounded me, coaxing to hear the stories. These tales, so taken at random, may throw a little light on the literature of Spanish nurseries. There was the life of the Madonna, which we pa.s.sed over, as the children said they had read it in school and knew it, every word, already. So we turned to the astonis.h.i.+ng career of the great soldier, Kill-Bullet, who could easily stop a cannon-ball against his palm, and to an account of that far-off land where it rained gold in such profusion that n.o.body would work, until finally all the people, weary of a wealth which induced no tailor to st.i.tch and no shoemaker to cobble, no baker to bake and no dairy-maid to churn, rose by common consent and shovelled the gold into the river.

We read of hot-tempered little Ambrose, who left the gate of his garden open, so that a hen cackled in and began to scratch under a rose bush, whereupon the angry boy chased her furiously all over the garden-beds until his summer's work was trampled into ruin, and his papa came and explained to him how disastrous a thing is wrath. There was a companion moral tale for little girls, telling how Inez used to make faces until her mamma told her that she would grow up with a twisted mouth and n.o.body would marry her, whereat did little Inez promptly reform her manners. One favorite volume, with a cover which displayed a wild-whiskered old ogre in a fiery skullcap gloating over a platterful of very pink baby, told how good little Violet saved her bad sisters, Rose and Daisy, from his dreadful gullet, by aid of an ugly monkey, whom her promised kiss transformed into a fairy prince. I was glad to find, in that country where so little is done to train children in the love of animals, the ancient tale of the four musicians, the donkey, the dog, the cat, and the c.o.c.k, who escaped in their old age from the death that threatened them at the hands of ungrateful masters and, by a free exercise of their musical talents, captured the house of a robber-band, putting its inmates to confusion and flight. Many of the stories, indeed, would have been recognized by young Americans, but the proportion of saint-lore was larger than that of fairy-lore, and, now and then, some familiar property had suffered a Spanish change, as the invisible cap which had become an invisible cape of the sort used for playing bull-fight.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PAGEANT OF GETHSEMANE]

The nursery rhymes, too, so far as I chanced upon them, were of the universal type with Spanish variations. A Castilian mother plays Peek-a-boo with her baby quite as an English mother does, except that the syllables are _Cu? Tras!_ The father's foot trots the child to a Catholic market.

"Trot, little donkey! Donkey, trot!

We must buy honey to please the pet.

If San Francisco has it not, We'll go to San Benet."

Baby's toes are counted as the eternal five little pigs, and also thus, with a preliminary tickling of the rosy sole:--

"Here pa.s.sed a little dove. This one caught it. This one killed it.

This one put it on to roast. This one took it off again. And this teeny-teeny-teeny scamp ate it all up!"

Spanish patty-cakes are followed by a Spanish grace.

"Patty-cakes, oh! Patty-cakes, ah!

The sweetest cakes are for dear mama.

Patty-cakes, oh! Patty-cakes, ah!

The hardest pats are for poor papa,

"Bread, O G.o.d! Bread, dear G.o.d, For this little child to-day!

Because he's such a baby He cannot pay his way."

The Spanish nursery seems richer in rhymes than ours. Nurse bends Baby's left hand into a rose-leaf purse, for example, and gives it little taps with one finger after another of Baby's right hand, singing:--

"A penny for Baby's purse From papa, mama, and nurse.

A penny, a penny to pay!

Let no thief steal it away!"

And then the tiny fist is doubled tight.

When the child, again, is first dressed in short clothes, he is propped up in a corner and coaxed to take his first step with the rhyme:--

"One little step, Baby-boy mine!