Part 12

The musicians, the King’s son and another youth with oiled hair and clean new jackets, took their places, twanged their guitars and the _fiesta flamanca_ began. First a dance by two women, while the others sat by, clapping their hands, tapping with their feet, keeping time to the music.

“More power!” cried the King.

“_Dalé, dalé_,” droned the chorus. The guitars twanged louder, the hand-clapping redoubled. Little by little the dancers woke up. The youngest woman was sixty, the oldest girl ten. This was a little disappointing to Patsy, though they all did their best and gave us good measure. The children were evidently students being carefully trained; the old women were all good artists, and intent on preserving and handing down the traditions of their art,--but the thing was somehow curiously academic! The old mother took a tambourine from the wall and shook out the music from it in fine style. “Tire yourselves!” she cried. After the second dance, she handed a tray with glasses of wine. Each succeeding dance was better than the last. The best of all was the one the old woman gave us at the end. Only once was there an approach to what Maria had hinted at. A woman with a bad face gave us a Jaleo, a gross, wriggling dance with unpleasant contortions of the body, wonderful as an exhibition of skill and strength, but not quite decent, and lacking the grace, the beauty, and the dignity of the old woman’s performance.

“Haven’t we had enough?” said Patsy, at the end of half an hour. “You saw those men tip the wink to our coachman as we passed? The whole village is on its good behavior. We are not to be shocked, annoyed, or begged from; it’s all put down in the bill we must pay the ruffian King for protecting us from his tribe, preventing us from seeing the real thing and giving us this fake show.”

Patsy was all wrong--because he was disappointed in the age of the performers! You can see a young and handsome Spanish dancing girl in any music hall in Madrid. The gypsy cave in the mountainside, where the dancers of the past and the dancers of the future meet, was worth a trip to Granada!

Of course we spent most of our time in Granada at the Alhambra. Some things must be experienced to be understood. Falling in love is one, Niagara Falls another, going down a toboggan slide a third, the Alhambra a fourth. The old simile of the oyster came to mind as freshly as if we had invented it,--just as every pair of young lovers imagine they have invented love! The heavy walls are the outside of the oyster; the fairy courts and halls painted with the tints of rainbow, dawn, sea, and moonlight are the inside of the shell. The pearl? In the room of the Two Sisters the winter apartment of the sultana, I had a vision of Irving’s Linderaxa. I could not remember how he described his pearl of the harem, but the face I saw or dreamed of as I sat in that fairy palace was the fairest woman’s face I ever saw. Her skin was like warm ivory, her hair an aureole of flame, her eyes, gray stars, her smile, the smile of the imperishable child.

I asked Patsy if he was disappointed in the Alhambra.

“Yes,” he said, “disappointed the right way. After the Acropolis, it is the best thing I ever saw. The lovely color, the movement of it all! Will you tell me how any people could invent a written language as decorative as this?” We were in one of the great halls looking at the Cuffik inscriptions that form one of the most fascinating and characteristic of the wall ornamentations.

“It is all based on Persian art, but it is even more joyous, don’t you think? You know the Koran discourages, if it does not forbid, the representation of any living creature in art. That is like the ‘Thou shalt make no graven image.’ Man and beast are practically ruled out of Arab art. Do you miss them? I don’t. After the gross use of men and animals,--remember the great bearded bullmen of the Assyrians, and the hawk and cat headed gods of Egypt,--this endless variation of leaf and flower and geometric design is refreshing. Why it is like a vegetarian diet to a sailor man who has had scurvy from living on salt beef.”

The guardian, who had long tracked us, here buttonholed J., and poured out a flood of familiar information. We listened mechanically, as he talked, until he said something we had not heard twenty times before.

“Last week two Moors from the Algeciras Conference were here. I myself took them about. They showed no enthusiasm. In this room the older one said to me, ‘These are sentences from the Koran,’ as if I did not know that before! In spite of all their pretended indifference, I knew very well what those Moors were feeling. It is a very deceitful race; they always hide their emotions.” The guardian spoke as scornfully of the Moors as Maria had spoken of the gypsies.

“Do you notice how they all dislike what they call deceit? The Spaniard is a truthful person, and honest. I don’t know why it is surprising, but after some of the countries we have traveled in, it comes like a shock!” said Patsy.

A long straight path of gold sand between two lines of tall, black cypresses leads to the old Moorish garden of the Generalife, near the Alhambra. Every other tree is clipped square at the top, the alternate one towering to a pointed spire. There is always a sound of gliding waters; in the early morning and evening, when the birds’ matins and lauds are sung, you can hear the nightingales and the merles. In the patio of the cypresses, under the shade of immemorial trees, is a great sheet of still green water like a vast chrysophrase, where you can study the cloud shadows, or your own reflection--if you are handsome--like Narcissus, or watch the greedy gudgeon and gold fish devour the bread you throw them. We passed through a long, flower-bordered path with a thicket of laurel, aloes and pomegranate for a background. A hundred tiny jets of water, like white aigrettes, waved among the green, and lost themselves in the shrubbery. We climbed the long Stairway of the Cascades, cheered by the babble of the little streams of water that run down the tops of the balustrade on either side. In the mirador at the top we rested, and looked down on the wonderful garden with its terraces, cedars, clipped myrtle hedges, thousand and one fountains.

“The Bankshires are only beginning here; in Seville the rose madness was at its height,” said Patsy. “We have travelled with the rose; we couldn’t have managed better if we had tried.”

From the mirador you see the Sierras with the eternal snow fields glistening on their summits. “The Moors certainly understood the use of water,” said J. “I have never seen anything quite so good as this garden even in Italy.”

There was music in the air, the rushing sound of water from those melting snows cunningly led down the mountainside and set here to dance and sing, to cool the heat and beguile the leisure hours of long, hot, summer days. Patsy watched with fascinated eyes a joyous _saldadore_ of water leaping and singing under the shade of an oak.

“Water is to these people of the south what fire is to us northerners,” he said. “They are the two living elements, and they both dance. Dancing is the natural expression of joy in life; it is copied from dancing spray and dancing flame. David was quite right to dance before the ark. I had a

Shaker nurse who danced with me when I cried; I suppose that is why I’m so fond of it.”

Granada cathedral is so hemmed in with trumpery little buildings that it is impossible to get an impression of it as a whole. The mushroom growth will have to go. Each succeeding tourist wave sweeping over Europe, as the Goths and Vandals swept before them, sweeps away some such trash, and uncovers hidden gems of architecture. The interior of the cathedral, though over ornate, has some splendid architectural effects, and is rich in every sort of treasure ecclesiastical. I remember a curious white marble statue of the Virgin with a black marble cloak, and a very charming painted wood group of St. Anne, St. Joachim and Mary, a good example of one of the arts you must come to Spain to see. Painted wood statuary, wrought iron work, ecclesiastical embroidery and--dancing have all been carried farther in Spain than anywhere else in Europe. Montañes, Roldan, and Alonzo Cano, succeeded in making their painted wood statues and bas-reliefs as dignified as if they had worked in bronze or marble. Just as Luca della Robbia did with terra cotta. There is a polychrome carved retablo of the Entombment in Seville, by Roldan, that is a true masterpiece of sculpture. The outer figures are modelled in such high relief they seem almost free; those in the middle distance are in ordinary high relief, the more distant in low, almost flat relief; the background is a painted wood panel. This does not sound encouraging, but the material a masterpiece is made of is of little consequence; it may be wood, marble, iron, gold or woven wool,--if a master uses it, a masterpiece is produced.

As I was sketching the wonderful wrought iron screen that shuts off the tombs from the main part of the chapel royal, I heard two women’s voices: “You have made a mistake, I think. The tombs of Ferdinand and Isabel are on the right,” said an alert, gray-haired woman.

“Thank you; I know,” said a clear young voice. The last speaker, caught red handed in the very act of laying flowers on a tomb, was annoyed. She saw that I, too, looked with disfavor on the alert gray-haired lady with the guidebook, and by mutual consent we made acquaintance beside the tomb of Juana la Loca, the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabel, and her husband, Philippe le Bel.

“Poor things!” said the girl who had laid the flowers between the two marble figures lying side by side.

“Poor things! Tell me their story if you remember it.”

“They were married when Juana was seventeen, and Philippe eighteen. She was very pretty, but he was the handsomest man in Europe. They only had each other ten years; even then they were not allowed much peace! At first they lived at his court in Brussels where they were very happy; life was not quite so strict and straight laced as at the Spanish Court. Isabel was a great queen, but I don’t think she could have been a nice mother. She sent a priest to be Juana’s confessor, a grim Spanish bigot. Phillippe laughed at him so much that Juana refused to confess to him. That was the beginning of all their troubles! The priest came back to Spain and told tales, set her mother against Juana. When she came home, to be with her mother when her child was born, Isabel tried to prevent her returning to her husband,--locked her up. Did you ever hear of such a thing?”

She spoke as if it was happening now; her face was flushed; she clinched and unclinched her hand.

“But they couldn’t keep Juana; she was like a raging lioness; they had to let her go back to her husband. Then Isabel spread the report that Juana was mad,--and made arrangements in her will to prevent her ever reigning. Juana wouldn’t have cared about that; all she wanted was to be let alone, to have a little peace and happiness in her life. After Isabel’s death, those two poor things made their great mistake,--they came back to Spain. Somebody who was jealous of their happiness poisoned Philippe. Nobody knows whether Juana’s father Ferdinand was responsible for the murder or the Inquisition. I think it was the Inquisition; those cruel inquisitors did not want anybody to be happy, and Philippe was too liberal, too open-minded to suit that terrible Cardinal Jimenez. Juana and Philippe were at Burgos at the time. When it was all over, the friends who were with her at the deathbed told Juana that her husband was dead.

“No,” she said, “not dead, asleep!” You see, then, she really did go mad. They had Philippe embalmed and put in a leaden coffin; from that day Juana was never separated from his body. Wherever she went she took it with her; for twenty years she travelled all over the country with it. I saw her coach, the first that ever came to Spain, in Madrid. In those days, when royalties travelled, they stopped at convents or monasteries, if there was no royal residence near. Poor Juana was so jealous she would never go into a convent, for fear the nuns might look at her beloved! Philippe dead had his pages and his suite just as if he had been alive. Finally, Juana was shut up at Tordesillas. There she had the coffin placed in a chapel leading from her room, where she could always see it.

Here is a photograph I bought of Pradilla’s picture of Juana.”

The picture shows the sad procession on a windswept hillside outside Burgos just before dawn. The coffin stands on an iron bier, with two wax candles at the head and foot. A priest reads the service from his book. Juana’s ladies stand or sit exhausted on the ground. A group of pages and gentlemen in furred dresses stand near a fire kindled in the open. Juana, in a long black dress, stands beside the coffin looking down. “Dead? No, asleep!” she seems to say.

“For forty-seven years Juana watched beside the body of her husband. He died at twenty-eight; she lived to seventy-four. Their son, Charles V, gave Juana as fine a tomb as Isabel’s. I think she deserved it. A great lover is as rare as a great queen. Come with me and see the vault. That old battered coffin is Philippe’s, the very one Juana carried about with her. I touched it the other day. It made it all seem so real!”

We were standing by the royal vault, looking down through a grating at the coffins, when a fair young man with blue eyes strolled through the chapel and joined us.

“Haven’t you been here long enough, Joan?” he said. “Let’s get out of this stuffy old church.”

“All ready, Philip; I was only waiting for you.” She looked at him with adoring eyes, smiled kindly at me, and went off leaning on his arm. They were as pretty a young couple as you could see, and their names were Philip and Joan! It could hardly have been by chance that they were here. I fancied that the bride had contrived to include a pilgrimage to the tomb of the true lover, Joan the Mad, in their wedding journey.

_Amor es como el vino_ _guárdate á tiempo_ _y te sabrá más dulce_ _cuanto mas viejo._

Love is like wine; Guarded with time It shall taste to thee sweetest When it is oldest.

IX

TANGIERS

We sailed from Algeciras for what Don Jaime called our “little crusade to Morocco.” The Don could not go with us; he was called to Madrid, he said, on important business. Patsy, who went down to Algeciras a day or two before us, had something to tell about the Conference then in session. The Moroccan delegates had arrived at night, bringing the ladies of their harems with them. They had landed between two and three in the morning, so the few curious persons waiting on the dock only caught an unsatisfactory glimpse of muffled figures passing from the vessel to the waiting carriages. Private houses had been prepared for the Moorish delegates; most of the Europeans, and Mr. Henry White, the American delegate, stayed at the Hotel Maria Cristina.

At the opening meeting of the Conference on the sixteenth of January, 1906, the president, the Duc d’Almodovar, declared that the reforms to be introduced into Morocco must be based on the triple principle of the sovereignty of the Sultan the integrity of his states, and the open door. The poor Moroccan delegates, who did not want any reforms at all introduced into their country, were only allowed to read their little speech at the second session, and as it was in Arabic, nobody understood much of it.

We had a perfect day for our trip across the Straits of Gibraltar from Europe to Africa. It took two hours and a half, and seemed much shorter than crossing the English channel. At one point we could see at the same time the white houses of Tangiers, and the gray Moorish fortifications of Tarifa, the southernmost point of Europe. The currents are very strong between the two coasts. A French steamer lay wrecked upon the rocks close to Tarifa Point light. The sea was like a silver shield. On the Spanish coast there were long stretches of tawny sands among the gray and purple rocks, with here and there an ancient Saracen watch-tower.

“Trafalgar Bay lies in that direction,” said Patsy, pointing to the northwest. “Nelson must have looked at these yellow cliffs, as he lay dying on the deck of the Victory, thinking, perhaps, of the white cliffs of England.”

The winds that blew over Trafalgar Bay caught the great Admiral’s last command, “Anchor,

Hardy, anchor,” and his last request whispered to his trusty Captain, “Kiss me, Hardy!” If you ever sail that way, listen to the wind whistling in the shrouds. If you have ears to hear such things, you may catch the echo of that whisper.

The coast of Africa, as we approached it, was not more arid than the opposite shore.

We anchored in the bay far out from Tangiers, a white town set like a pearl on the edge of an emerald crescent. Near the right point of the crescent, Tangiers climbs up the hill from the yellow sea sands to the green heights of the foreign embassies and villas; at the extreme point stands the lighthouse. America cleared the Mediterranean of Barbary pirates; and the great European powers built the lighthouse, as they have built the post-offices, the hospital, and every other modern thing in Morocco. While waiting for the health officers, we watched the fish darting through the clear, beryl-green water. Presently a lighter with a load of bulls closely wedged together drew up alongside the steamer. A rope was passed round the horns of two of the bulls, and they were hoisted on board in pairs, in what seemed a cruel manner. The whole weight came on their horns, their necks were stretched out, their poor, frightened eyes, blank with terror haunt me still. They made no noise; most of them hung limp; a few struggled and only succeeded in kicking each other.

We and our luggage were rowed ashore in a small boat. The sea was alive with half naked bronze men in sacking bournouses, who waded back and forth, carrying enormous loads of terra cotta tiles from a lighter to the land. On the pier a splendid person in a long blue garbardine, white turban, and yellow slippers, met us with a card and a bouquet of flowers.

“My name is Ali,” he said; “I am your friend.” He laid his hand to his lips, then to his forehead with the grave and lovely salutation of the East.

Ali led us before three magnificent, white-robed Moors, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the custom-house, smoking long chibouks. These officials paid no attention to us; indeed, they seemed unconscious of our presence. The two younger men went on with their conversation; the elder, kingly as Saul, looked silently across the sea towards that lost paradise of his race, Andalusia. Our luggage was laid down at their feet; they did not even glance at it. After a few minutes, the youngest Moor took his pipe from his mouth, and waved his hand slightly in our direction.

“All right,” said Ali, “good custom-house, yes?”

The bearers took up our portmanteaus, and we passed into the narrow crowded street where no vehicle can go, and where Ali had hard work to protect me from the surging crowd of heavily laden porters and donkeys. It was market day. Ali piloted us through a maze of narrow, twisting lanes, and markets thronged with strange figures: Moors in white bournouses, Jews in black caftans, negro slaves with gashed faces, wild looking hill men with blue eyes, who looked at us more fiercely than all the rest. The buyers and sellers outshrieked each other. The long sharp cry of the water-carriers, the braying of donkeys, the yelling of man, woman and child, mingled with the hammering of the tin and coppersmiths in the bazaars.

In the vegetable market we met a tall old Sheik with a long beard, dressed in a lovely pea-green _jellabiyah_, with turban to match, and salmon colored undergarments. Ali salaamed to him.

“Health be with you!”

“And with you be peace!” The Sheik’s voice was like distant thunder. He carried a large basket. The seller of vegetables received him respectfully, if less cordially than Ali. The Sheik cast a critical eye over the vegetables, then laid his hand on a bunch of young carrots, a string of fresh onions, some ruby radishes and some long green beans. Whatever he touched, the dealer put into his basket, saying, “Take it,” each time more faintly.

“God increase thy goods!” said the Sheik, when he had considerably diminished them by half filling his own basket.

“And thy goods, also,” answered the dealer cheerfully, as the old man pottered off to the butcher’s, next door.

“He is holy man,” said Ali; “they all give to him.”

The butcher’s gifts--a skinned sheep’s head, with awful staring eyes, and other gruesome things, were too horrid to look at. We waited till the Sheik passed on to the bread sellers, a group of white shrouded women sitting against a wall. They were as carefully veiled as if they had been young and lovely ladies. Each had a cushion before her with flat loaves of bread. When the middle one gave the Sheik a loaf, there was the rattle of bangles, and a glimpse of a hand that might have belonged to the Cumaean sibyl.

Outside the market, in the midst of the mad hurly-burly, there appeared an incarnation of that Oriental calm we had begun to believe the Moors had left behind them in Cordova. Down the middle of an evil-smelling lane, a man on horseback rode slowly towards us. The squalling crowd made way for him, flattening itself against the wall.

“Welcome!” said Ali, as the stranger passed in the odor of sandalwood.

“Twice welcome,” answered the horseman. He was fairer than many Spaniards; his brown beard and moustache were beautifully combed and curled, he had a high aquiline nose, eyes like dark jewels, thin pencilled eyebrows. He was dressed all in white; his _sulham_ of finest wool had a silk braid round the edge, and tassel hanging from the hood drawn over his head. He turned his horse to avoid us. Except for that slight motion of laying the reins against the animal’s neck--the action showed a slim brown hand with an ancient turquoise ring--he gave no sign of having seen us. It is a sign of Arab as of British breeding, not to look too much at strangers.

“That was an Arab gentleman,” said J.

“Now I know just how Abd-er Rahman looked!” murmured Patsy.

The horse was a spirited chestnut, with a skin so thin the veins showed under it, and delicate, proud feet that he planted scornfully in the unspeakable filth of the lane. Later, in Blacksmiths Square, where we lingered to watch two men shoe an old white mare--one held her foot, the other put on the shoe--a servant led the chestnut up to the smith. The man stopped work, patted the chestnut and kissed it, while his helper fed it with little cakes. Though there were a dozen horses and mules waiting their turn to be shod, the chestnut took precedence over all.

Ali explained this favoritism. “That horse, he have been to Mecca,” he said. “That make him very holy.”

For all his holiness the homely smell of the chestnut’s scorched hoof when the hot shoe touched it was in no wise different from the old white mare’s!