Part 17

As we drew near the church, we met a great number of horses, mules and donkeys on their way to be blessed. A white horse with the _paso castellano_, a beautiful silky mane braided with bright ribbons and a pretty silk head-stall, was so exactly like the horse the young dealer from Ronda showed at the Seville fair that I half believed it to be the same animal. The man who led him wore Andalusian dress, and a carnation behind the ear. Man and horse picked their way through the crowd of loafers, women, children and sweetmeat-sellers, to the church. A priest soon came out followed by an acolyte all in scarlet like an embryo cardinal, and from the church steps the priest sprinkled the horse with holy water, the acolyte swung his silver censer, the incense rose in a blue cloud. From a side window a sacristan passed the young man a bag of fodder that had been blessed, and with the payment of a little money, the ceremony was over.

The church was full of kneeling people; the altars were ablaze with candles. I wished to go in to see the Goya, a picture of the Last Communion of Saint Jerome.

Don Jaime said I had better see it another time; to-day there were too many people. There was some small-pox about--not enough to be nervous over--but to avoid contagion it was well to keep out of the churches. If there is a desperately sick child in the house, of course one goes continually from the bedside of the child to the church and prays for its recovery. The old grandmother, or the little children who can do nothing to help, can at least spend the morning in the church, out of harm’s way, praying for it!

At dinner Antonina, a fairy of five who lived next door, brought in a plate of _rosquitas de San Antonio_, delicious little crisp cakes baked only this day in all the year. Jaime, who had come in while we were still at table, ate one of the cakes as a reward for having been to church.

“In England,” the Don remembered, “they eat hot cross buns on Good Friday and pancakes on Shrove Tuesday; they have forgotten the _rosquitas_ of Saint Anthony and the _tortas_ of San José.”

On the nineteenth of March, the _fiesta_ of San José and of all his namesakes, I asked Pedra if we should have one of the tarts of St. Joseph for dinner.

“In all Madrid there is no house so poor that the _torta_ of San José will not be eaten to-day. He is the patron of the church, and as such we all must venerate him.” It was a busy day for Don José Villegas; a flood of visitors, cards, letters, telegrams and presents poured through the Tower of Babel from daylight till midnight. He sat in his study busy writing notes of congratulation and sending despatches to all the other Josés of his acquaintance. I looked over the cards; there were the names of statesmen, artists, poets, singers, musicians and bull-fighters, all linked together into a sort of fraternity, because they bore in common the name of good Saint Joseph.

In almost every circumstance of life or death, the Church plays a leading part. The wife of a friend of Don Jaime died while we were in Madrid, and the Don arranged that I should see the funeral procession and one of the many services. The cortége was headed by four men dressed in white broadcloth short clothes and Louis-Seize coats, white wigs, silk stockings and three cornered hats; each carried a long white staff. The hearse was a gorgeous white affair, drawn by four white horses with sweeping ostrich plumes. It was preceded and followed by a large company of priests, monks and choristers carrying wax candles and chanting a miserere. The mourners followed on foot. More than a week after the lady’s death I went with Jaime and his sister Candalaria to the house of mourning. In the private chapel we listened to a long service lasting over an hour. The chaplain of the family officiated, reciting the rosary, the litany and many prayers. This was the last and ninth day of these services. When it was over, I went home, Don Jaime and Candalaria remaining behind to speak with the mourners. Afterwards they told me something of the visit. Candalaria found the ladies of the family in one room surrounded by a crowd of women friends dressed in mourning.

“They all talked at once,” said Candalaria, “saying the same thing over and over again. ‘Poor soul! So young to die! So good, so devout! What will her husband do without her?’”

The Don had found the widower in another room with his men friends about him. He told the Don that his greatest grief was that his wife had died suddenly, without having time to make a confession or receive the sacraments. The Don wondered what possible sin she could have had on her soul. Everybody said, and he believed, that the dead woman was very nearly a saint.

Candalaria--her name means Candlemas--is a Majorcan. When I asked Don Jaime to tell me something about the island of Majorca where she lives, he said: “In Majorca all properties is oranges. It has a fine weather as well.” I said it must be a pleasant place to live.

“Candalaria she finds it so. She is bery clever, she plays piano and biolin.” Jaime always assumed b and v to be interchangeable in English as they so often are in Spanish. “Her husband is topographic engineer. Candalaria helps him to draw the geographic carts.”

Don Jaime’s sister is married to an officer of engineers; she draws so nicely that she often helps her husband in making his army maps. She is a small, energetic woman with consuming eyes, fiery, energetic, practical, everything Don Jaime is not. She had come to Madrid to see her brother and the carnival. Jaime introduced us to her, and during her stay, we were often together.

“In your country, Señora,” Candalaria said when we first met, “you have the largest of everything of the world. Is it rivers? The Mississippi. Is it a cataract? Niagara. Is it mountains? The Andes. Your fortunes are also the largest. Where we count in millions of _reals_, you count in millions of _duros_.”

It was Candalaria who presented me to Doña Emilia Pardo de Bazan, one of the leading Spanish novelists, a gray-haired woman with a powerful face. Doña Pardo Bazan spoke with me about the position of women in Spain.

“I look for nothing from the women of my country,” she said; “whatever is done to improve their position must be done by men. Our laws are good. Women have a right to enter some of the universities and some of the professions, but they take no advantages of these privileges. It is the fear of ridicule that keeps them back.”

I told her that we used to hear a great deal about the fear of ridicule in the old days at home, and that it had been proved a bugbear. She went on to say that she had been asked to help form a woman’s club and had refused; she knew it would be of no use, because it would be laughed at.

At the reception where I met Doña Pardo Bazan I was introduced to a pretty Marquesa Fulano and her prettier daughter. “Tell me,” I said to the Marquesa, “the title of Doña Pardo Bazan’s most important book.”

“I do not know it,” was the answer; “she writes for gentlemen, not for ladies. I will enquire, if, among the many books she has written, there is one that you could read.”

Though I never saw the Marquesa again, I read _La Tribuna_, one of the writer’s strongest novels, and I know the Marquesa and I should not agree about what books a woman may with advantage read. I know, too, that everything is to be looked for from the women of Spain, for whom Doña Pardo Bazan--I have heard her called the foremost literary woman in Europe--has done so much.

I asked Jaime how many children Candalaria had.

“Eleven,” he said; “that gives me eleven to remember in my will. To whom God sends no children, the devil sends nephews and nieces.”

The carnival Candalaria had timed her visit for, was well worth seeing. It was a famous year in Spain for pageants of all sorts. The King’s engagement and approaching marriage put everybody in a good-natured, money-spending mood. Great enthusiasm was expressed for what was always spoken of as “the English alliance.” Whenever the King gave his ministers the slip, and ran off in his automobile to see the Princess Ena at San Sebastián, everybody was delighted.

Carnival began the Sunday before Ash Wednesday. The chief feature was a parade of cars, or floats, competing for prizes offered by the municipality. The parade took place in the splendid avenue that, under various names, runs through the new quarter of Madrid from north to south.

Lucia, Patsy and I started from the Tower of Babel soon after three o’clock. We had not driven far, when we caught sight of Villegas in the crowd at the corner.

“I knew he was dying to come with us all the time,” murmured Patsy; “in spite of what he said.”

“Angoscia disappointed me; they are all mad;” sighed Villegas, as he climbed into the carriage.

“That is well,” said Lucia. “Thou hadst need of a holiday; thou hast not taken a day of repose this year.”

“Though the premium is offered for the best car, the best car will not get the premium, thou wilt see.” Jaime called to Villegas from his cab, following at a foot-pace, along the Castellana.

“_Se sabé!_” Villegas agreed. The “best car” came creaking towards us, a vast float drawn by four gray oxen with gilded horns and gold-embroidered head-dresses. Two Catalan peasants

walked beside, driving the oxen: they wore wide sombreros, and bright _mantas_ folded over the shoulder. The car was an excellent representation of the House of Congress, with its Greek façade, white columns, timpanum, and bronze lions on either side the door. Behind the columns was a brazen pot filled with men dressed as locusts. The car was greeted with roars of laughter and applause.

“Thou seest?” said Jaime to Villegas. “The government devours the country like locusts! It is true! We have the best people in the world, and the worst government!”

“_Bravo!_ _El Congreso!_” yelled the people in the carriages. “_Muy bien!_” The crowd that lined the sidewalks answered with cries of “_Magnifico!_ _Bravo!_ _El carro satirico!_”

Jaime was right, the prize was not awarded to the Congreso, but to the parrots. A mammoth cage in the middle of a float with a big sham parrot hanging on a ring and all around the cage a group of _señoritas_ and _caballeros_ dressed to look like parrots with green velvet coats, gray satin vests, red velvet caps and big beaks.

“It almost deserves the prize, only the Congreso should have had it!” said Patsy.

As the Government appoints the judges, that was hardly to be expected. The second prize was awarded to a wagon-load of toy soldiers in French uniform. They stood stiff as wooden dolls, till you looked close and saw, under the soldiers’ caps, the faces of pretty girls and laughing lads.

“Seville, the Feria, Concepcion!” cried Patsy; “this is magic!”

It was little short of it. On the float coming towards us was the patio of an Andalusian house with Moorish columns and _azulejos_, from which a _maya_ and a _mayo_ looked out on the crowd. The _maya_ wore a black chenille overdress with a yellow satin skirt and a rose in her hair like Concepcion.

Down the middle of the Paseo de la Castellana, the most fashionable part of the route, a line of gaily decorated tribunes had been built; these were filled with well-dressed people.

“That is the tribune of La Pena, the fashionable club in the Alcalá,” Patsy said. “The next is the Press Club. This is the Artists’ Club, and this last is the tribune of the French Colony.”

The crowd of men, women and children in the stands were armed with flowers, huge sacks of confetti, and rolls of colored paper ribbons, which unwind when they are thrown, like rockets or lassos. In a white carriage drawn by four silver-gray mules with postilions and outriders, sat two beauties dressed in silver. Passing in the other direction was a car with a representation of Carthage. The Carthaginians were splendidly dressed. As car and carriage met, a pair of dark Carthaginian men lifted a bag of violet confetti and poured it down on the white carriage, so that we saw the beauties through a purple haze. The effect of the changing colors was dazzling. Violet, declared at Paris _the_ color of the season, predominated over all others.

“This,” said Patsy, “is like walking through a gallery of living impressionist pictures.”

“_Maestro!_ _Ay Maestro!_” we were passing the tribune of the Artists’ Club, when, bifferty! a long yellow streamer coiled about Villegas’ neck and flew out behind. Soon the landeau was hung in a maze of paper ribbons, every color of the rainbow, tangling in the wheels, wound round the hubs, filling the carriage, half strangling us. A fine victoria with a harlequin and a mask in pink satin, stopped close to us. A servant was sent to our carriage and presented Lucia with a pretty porcelaine _bonbonnière_ of caramels. It was growing late and people began to be hungry. The flowers were exhausted; chocolates and candies hailed into the carriage. In the cab behind, Candelaria unpacked a box of sandwiches, a bottle and two glasses.

“_Un poco de ginevra de campana?_” said Don Jaime, offering a glass to Patsy.

“Luz, Luz, Luz!” The cry came from a box of caramels filled with young _caballeros_ done up like bonbons in pink paper. Luz, lovely as daybreak, smiled as her carriage passed the caramels; we saw her through a storm of rosy confetti. We drove down for a last turn to the end of the Castellana.

The sunset was pink, gold and violet, to match the prevailing tone of the carnival. Against the sky the Guaderramas stood out boldly with the eternal white confetti on their summits. Our carriage halted by the statue of Isabel the Catholic, sitting on her horse between her good and her evil genius, Columbus standing at her bridle and just behind her the cowled, sinister figure of Torquemada.

“Don Alfonzo!” The young King in his automobile flew by, a dent in his bowler hat, his coat covered with confetti. He threw a bunch of roses to a _señorita_ dressed like a strawberry, sitting in a basket of fruit, the other strawberries all answered with double handful of pinkish confetti, and cries of “_muy bien!_” He was supposed to be incognito and was throwing flowers and confetti just like any other jolly boy of nineteen. Of course everybody recognized him, but the fiction of the incognito was strictly respected, which seemed very sensible. It must be supposed that he needs a little fun for his soul’s sake, like the rest of us. He got his full share that afternoon.

Last of all we drove through the Alcalá, Madrid’s main artery, to the Puerta del Sol, the city’s mighty heart. The rest of Madrid sometimes sleeps a little; here the life blood pulses ceaselessly to and fro.

“I have been in the Puerta del Sol at every hour of the twenty-four,” said Patsy, “and I have never found it empty.”

The streets were guarded by the Ramonones,--mounted police, polite, energetic, keeping an order that was wonderful, considering the vast crowd, and was most of all due to the crowd’s desire that order should be kept.

It was growing dark, the electric lamps twinkled out of the lavender mist. Just ahead of us, on the prize-winning car of the parrots, they were burning red Bengal lights. At the corner of the dark street where we must turn to reach home, a fine carriage, full of elegant maskers, passed us. A Pierrot in green satin stood on one step flirting with a Turkish lady, a contrabandista on the other whispered to an Andaluz. As we drove by in our modest carriage, the red Bengal lights of the parrots lit up Don José’s face. From the grand carriage came the cry:

“_Villegas! gloria de la patria!_”

“They are all mad!” said Villegas; “_vamos!_ it’s time to go home.”

Ash Wednesday morning the streets were full of sweepers trying to get rid of the green, pink and red papers, the trampled débris of the last three days’ frolic. We met Luz coming out of San Isidro Real. She was all in black, wearing the mantilla. On her forehead the priest had traced a cross of ashes. The church was filled with fashionably dressed men and women, many of whom we had seen the day before at the carnival. Each came out into the sunlight with the cross of dust and ashes on the forehead, in token of the day of mourning. In the stable-yard behind the church we saw the ruins of the second prize winner, the toy soldier cart. The little sentry box hung in the right place, the stiff green trees, the dummy soldiers in their smart French uniforms stuck up oddly from the cart. The merry group of live soldiers, the pretty girls and saucy boys were scattered; perhaps some of them were in the church. As we stood watching the wreck of the prize winner, men began to take the car to pieces and to pull off the remaining decorations.

“_Sic transit gloria mundi_,” said Patsy; “I’m for the Prado and glories that do not pass so quickly.”

XIII

TOLEDO

Our winter in Madrid wore pleasantly away; we basked in the Sun of To-day, gave hardly a thought to the Shadow of Yesterday. Fate wove the thread of our existence into her tapestry of life in the Spanish capital in the year 1906; a many-toned fabric with touches of gold and silver, sinister crimson and sombre black. Now that the web is finished and hung up in the hall of memory, I see that in the earlier part rose color is the predominating tone.

“It’s as good for a nation as it is for a person, after they have been in mourning, to come out into the world again and take an interest in other people’s affairs,” said Patsy. “The Conference, whatever it may do for Morocco, is being very good for Spain.”

The two absorbing topics of conversation were the Algeciras Conference and the King’s marriage. From our friends in the diplomatic world we heard a deal of talk about what was going on at Algeciras, where the representatives of thirteen Powers were discussing the vexed questions of the State Bank of Morocco which it was proposed to establish under European control, the policing of the unhappy country by France and Spain, the administration of customs, and the various reforms proposed to the Sultan. On all sides we heard compliments for our representative, Mr. Henry White, _par excellence_ the peacemaker of the Conference. I was told by a distinguished diplomat that Mr. White’s exquisite tact and good feeling “saved the situation more than once.”[3] Besides keeping the peace, the American delegate put in a good word for the Jews, asking that they might have religious tolerance in Morocco. His plea was seconded by Sir Arthur Nicholson, the English delegate, and the Duke of Almodovar who, ignoring the little detail of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, reminded the delegates that his country had an especial interest in the Hebrews of Morocco, who still spoke the Castilian language, and were the descendants of Spanish Jews. The English, seconded by the Americans, made a plea for the gradual abolition of slavery in Morocco, against the public sale of men and women in the slave markets of the interior, and for the improvement of the prisons. It was pleasant to see England and the United States aiding and abetting each other in all these humane efforts.

The Moroccan delegate, Sid Hach el Mokri, Ancient Inspector of Weights and Measures at Fez, and his colleague did little but protest against the reforms the Powers proposed to institute at the expense of Morocco and under the direction of the Diplomatic Corps at Tangiers. Hach el Mokri cried out that he was there to see Morocco’s income increased, not decreased, and that many of the proposed reforms had not been included in the programme of the Conference. Patsy, who had seen Sid Mokri and made an excellent photograph of the old man in his white bournous, with his long white beard and piercing eyes, had a sneaking sympathy for him.

“After all, the world will be a tame place when there are telephones and electric cars everywhere,” he said. “If Morocco does not want to be civilized our way, or any other way, why should she be?” The Powers are cutting and carving the revenues, the commerce, the future of that unfortunate country as if they were masters of the situation. They are a long way from it! Before France gets the little Germany means to let her have, she must pay dear for it, even if England stands by to see fair play.

I had a sudden vision of the garden in Tangiers and the strange old man who had talked with me of Moroccan affairs. I seemed to hear his brooding voice utter, as if in prophecy, “Keep your ear to the ground; the end of Islam is not yet!”

Our Spanish friends were naturally even more interested in Don Alfonzo’s affairs than in those of the Sultan of Morocco. It was wonderful how the courtship of one pair of lovers made a whole nation in love with life! There was a delicate thrill of expectation in the air. Spain drank deep of the three great cordials, youth, hope and love, forgot the old pain in the new rapture. Every detail of the King’s wooing was eagerly discussed. The news that the Princess Ena had been received into the Church of Rome and renounced the errors of the Protestant faith was a “world event.” Her decision to take the names, Victoria Eugenie, gave great satisfaction. It was rumored that the Empress Eugenie had given her a wedding present of a million _pesetas_, and would make the future Queen of Spain her heir. Older people recalled the poor young Prince Imperial’s early attachment to Princess Beatrice, Princess Ena’s mother.

“The Empress was a Spaniard,” Candalaria reminded me; “a Montijo of Malaga. My parents knew the family. It is quite natural she should wish her money to come back to Spain. My father was at the funeral of her son, the Prince Imperial. He saw the great English Queen, Victoria, and her daughter, Princess Beatrice, when they drove over to Chiselhurst to lay a golden laurel wreath on the coffin of the young Prince Napoleon IV, as they called him, killed in the Zulu war, fighting for the English.”

We had all become so absorbed in the pleasant social life of Madrid, so taken up with current matters of public and private interest, that the many journeys we had planned were put off and put off. Had it not been for a chance question of Patsy’s, we might never even have seen Toledo, we were living--except for those golden hours in the Prado--so completely in To-day. One brilliant March afternoon Don Jaime greeted me at the door of the Museum with his cheery “Good day, Missis.” The Don liked to go with us to the Prado; he was interested in Patsy’s art education and, if neither Villegas nor Don Luis were present, would hold forth on the merits of the pictures.

“Good afternoon, Don,” said Patsy; “what’s the news?”

“There are very few news. You receive some lollipops?” The Don’s intercourse with English-speaking people, broken off when he left school, led him to suppose that to be happy they must be continually fed with lollipops.

“Nuns of Concepcion Convent has secret of preparing those sweets, same like Benedictines’ liquor secret.”

Knowing his poverty, I was troubled by the little presents he was forever making one or other of us, of which Patsy’s lollipops were an example.

“It’s his way of keeping his end up,” Patsy maintained. “The Don expects to die rich, to leave his family rolling in money. He has an invention for a flying machine half worked out. On his paternal _heredad_--a piece of waste land in the Sierra Rondina--there’s a rich iron mine, and a spring of sparkling mineral water, better, he says, than apollinaris. The joke of it all is, I believe what he says is perfectly true. He will never ‘realize’ on spring or mine, though perhaps Candalaria’s eleven may!”

“You look festive this morning, Don; where did that sporty rose come from?” Patsy asked. The Don always had a flower in his buttonhole, though he often had not a dollar in his pocket.