Poor Folk in Spain

We passed through El Angel on to the Murcia road. We then asked a group of men, who were winnowing corn on a flat biblical threshing floor of beaten mud, which was the direction. Unfortunately we had got rather mixed in the name. The peasant had not spoken his name very clearly and we had confused it with conecho.[17] The winnowers said that they could not understand us very clearly, but that it was probably further along, and they wished us to "go with God." Further along the road we, having found in the dictionary what conecho really means, tried the other name.

The use of this brought us into a narrow side-path between rows of mulberry trees and deep watercourses. It took a sudden turn to the left, and on the path we saw Coneni, tall and lank, waving welcoming arms at us.

The place was embowered in trees: lemon, fig, pear, plum, apple, quince and pomegranate flourished luxuriantly in the irrigated soil. The huertas of the Murcian plain were not separated, one from another, by hedges, and it was difficult to know how large was Coneni's garden. In one corner, beneath the shelter of overhanging fruit-trees, was a hut made of stiff bamboo-like reeds, the roof daubed with mud against the rain. From the front of this hut projected a long awning of reeds, beneath which the Coneni family was awaiting us. Mrs. Coneni was plump, motherly, and had a genial nature covering an inflexible will. She also had perfect manners, was full of courtliness and kindness, and was delighted to see us. She showed her naïve pleasure by touching me whenever she was able to do so without rudeness. Our broken Spanish aroused her sense of wonder. Coneni, for the first time in his life, made up his mind to understand us. He stopped his habitual pre-breakfast pantomime and swaggered about, saying:

"But I understand all they say. Yes, I do."

He disappeared into the square small hut and came out again carrying an enormous green water-melon called locally a sandia. He tapped it with a knuckle and, from the sound that it made, decided that it was ripe. He then cut off top and bottom with a small hatchet and divided it into huge slices. While we were eating the luscious pink fruit neighbours began to saunter up. They stood in a circle around us. Coneni, with the air of a showman, said:

"Now I will show you something. She smokes; it is true. I have seen her myself."

He made me a cigarette. The men were delighted and Mrs. Coneni was amazed. Coneni stood behind me with a lean hand on his hip, as if to say: "Alone I did it."

Beneath the reed shelter some of the children were lying asleep, and the youngest of all, a baby, was sitting by itself in a corner, stark naked, playing with a large lemon. The exquisite colour contrast between the transparency of skin of the sunburnt child and the hard yellow brilliance of the lemon filled me with a wild desire to paint it. Indeed, one does not come to appreciate the full beauty of the nude until one has seen it in a country where it is natural. In Spain the children, usually half nude, sprawled about in the heat in the most graceful of relaxed poses, sometimes lying half asleep across their mothers' laps, and a continual impulse was driving me to make studies of them. But the task is almost impossible. The fact of being sketched is too unusual. The people, naturally unselfconscious, at once become stiff and formal.

Within Coneni's hut was no furniture other than a four-post bed which almost filled the floor space. Here slept Coneni and his wife, and the space beneath the bed was used as a storehouse for melons. The children, three girls and four boys, all slept on the ground in the open beneath the shelter. But Mrs. Coneni explained to me with some care that the poverty was only apparent; that this was but their summer residence. For the winter they had a fine house in Alverca.

We did not have any very keen impulse to paint—it had become for that afternoon rather too much of a ceremony, like the old State painter performing before the Court—but to save our faces we had to do something, so Jan painted a portrait of a calf, while I selected a lemon tree. Before I had half finished, the interior of the tree was swarming with Coneni's children, hoping that they would be included. By my side sat Coneni's little girl nursing a bantam, like a doll, assuring it that mother wouldn't love it if it were not more quiet.

"And the Señor plays the guitar," exclaimed Coneni. "He is affectionate to music."

We discussed Spanish music and dancing. Coneni, bursting with hospitality, said:

"Come again next Sunday. I will invite the young men and the girls and we will have a party. There are guitar and lute players at Alverca. They will all come."

Antonio's brother-in-law, Thomas, had spoken of the gay times when there is a party in the huertas; we accepted eagerly.

We went home laden with presents of fruit which Coneni had pressed upon us. Especially was our greed delighted with a large basket of figs. We had been asking the Conenis to bring us some figs for some days, but they had said:

"We can't bring you figs. Nobody sells figs here. We give them to the pigs."

So that evening we rivalled the pigs

CHAPTER XVII

VERDOLAY—THE INHABITANTS

The little village of Verdolay was not a characteristic Spanish village, it was a watering-place. One came into it along the dusty road between banks on which grew the spiky aloe shrubs, behind which spread the spaced olive groves with trees drawn up into demure lines, amongst the grey foliage of which could be seen the red painted corrugated roofs of the French Silk Company. The village scrambled up a terraced hill. The lower edge was a line of orange-vermilion one-storied houses faced with a small promenade. Then the houses scattered. To the right as one faced the hill were the baths, a collection of bulky, ramshackle buildings which hid deep, cool courtyards, and from which came the plash of water and the sound of young voices. The hill-side was covered with terraced gardens in which were set houses painted yellow, green, blue or pink. The apex of the hill was decorated by an iron windwheel for pumping. A ridge joined the crest of the hill to the mountains, and here perched the ancient monastery of Santa Catalina; while a mile away to the right, showing white amongst a green bed of palms and firs, was the country seat of the Count of El Valle, and to the left amongst groves of oranges was the villa of an ex-Prime Minister.

One had almost a specimen of Spain in little in this one village. The vermilion houses, called the Malecon, sheltered a transitory population; visitors to the baths, who like ourselves arrived in carts with furniture, and after a few months disappeared back to town duties. These were usually of the superior artisan or small shopkeeping class. The second row of houses contained persons such as Don Ferdinand, the little Señor or the people who kept the baths. These represented the larger tradesmen and in general lived all the year in Verdolay, travelling to Murcia by tartana or by tram via Palmar. The two roads which swept up each side of the hill were edged with small cottages where the real peasantry lived, and the houses which stood amongst gardens on the hill terraces, each owning its proper entrance, were the residences of the merchantry. The Count of El Valle represented the county aristocracy and the ex-Prime Minister the Court.

In spite of a somewhat evil local reputation, the peasantry could be counted as a quiet, hard-working, rather unintelligent, good-natured community which leaned vaguely, on the male side, to liberalism and atheism, but lacking the courage or determination to make either effective. It cursed the Court and told dirty stories about the priesthood, but all exasperation evaporated in words. This peasantry is the foundation on which the whole of this plutocratical hill of Verdolay rests; and it labours as severely as any other peasantry, perhaps even working harder because of the lack of water, which adds a need to be satisfied before work is over. The average traveller has the idea that the Spaniard is lazy. We are not sure that this is a correct estimate of him. We English have made a god of "Work." But indeed unnecessary work is mere foolishness. The great blessing to be sought for is leisure. Human advance comes from the reflections of leisure rather than from the activities of work. The Spaniard recognizes leisure as the benefit which it is. He has no false ideas about work. Adam bit the apple, and we pay his debts, but why load ourselves with compound interest at many hundreds per cent.? That is the Spaniard's point of view. He works when he must work. He rises with the dawn or before it, say four a.m., he works till eleven o'clock, then in the afternoon resumes toil from 3.30 till 6.30. The late-rising traveller who mouches about in his English custom during the hottest hours of the day sees the Spanish labourer at his siesta, snoozing by the roadside, or thrumming his guitar to a herd of sleepy goats. He draws a natural, though incorrect, conclusion.

The Spaniard may be dilatory. He puts off doing to-day what he can do to-morrow, but it is from an exaggerated respect for the benefits of leisure. His handicap is that he has no proper means of filling that leisure, his apparent laziness comes from lack of education. About eighty per cent. cannot read, schooling is not enforced, and children begin work at ten years of age or thereabouts. But do not lay up the Spaniard's desire for inactivity as a crime; it is a virtue ill employed.

Our particular specimen of the Spanish peasant was my female servant, named Encarnacion. She was thirteen years old, could neither read nor write, and worked like a small mule for the not extravagant wage of eleven shillings and sixpence a month. She only worked half the day, it is true, but we did not give her food. We indeed overpaid her, for the regular wage of her kind was about eight shillings and fourpence a month. She had a small, stumpy child's body, sprouting into a long neck, at the top of which was a rounded head. Her forehead was intellectual, her features flattened, and her hair, done up tight into a small ball, was usually decorated with a flower or a green leaf.

At first, like all Spanish peasants, she made up her mind that she could not understand what I said, but gradually learned that she had to do so, and in general succeeded pretty well. But it was to her a tremendous intellectual effort. She would wrinkle her noble-looking brow with the strain, and was never satisfied until she had translated my orders into her own patois for clarity. But she would not allow her fundamental ideas of what was proper to be influenced by my foreign notions. Sometimes she would interrupt me.

"No, Señora," she would say, "I do not like it done thus. That is not the custom. It must be done so."

If one insisted upon one's own way, the work was ill done. So that, as a rule, to save trouble, one allowed her to do as she wished. Encarnacion worked all the morning, singing an interminable Spanish song, which struck our ears queerly and pleasantly at the beginning, but of which in the end we grew very tired. By eleven o'clock she would have done all the housework, the shopping and the cooking, and would leave the stone floors soaked in water, the evaporation of which did a little to counteract the intense heat. She had a habit which we did not like of scattering our household refuse all over the small square yard. It looked dirty and untidy, but we found out that she knew better than we did. The vagrant cats soon cleared up any remains of meat, while the hot sun dried up all the other refuse, which could then be thrown away conveniently.

Encarnacion was sad that she could neither read nor write, and was proudly jealous of her younger sister, who, working in the milk factory, was being taught to spell.

She of course acquired a proprietary right in us. She upheld the honour of the house, and gave a lesson in manners to a gipsy girl from the cave dwellings who had once thrown a stone at me. She also criticized our work. To the almost daily parties of strangers who walked into our house whenever the door was left unlocked, she acted as guide to our pictures drying on the walls, and she would explain to whom each house in the sketches belonged.

But she never said "Thank you."

There are considerable differences between Spanish customs and those of ordinary Europe, and these are apt to disconcert the traveller. Here are a few Spanish ones that we noted en passant.

You may walk into any house or garden if moved to do so by curiosity if you, previous to entering, utter the magic formula: "Se pueda entrar?"[18]

You may stare as much as you like at anything or anybody, for staring is in reality a compliment.

Self-consciousness is a silly vanity.

If you feel friendly towards an acquaintance you may call on him at nine in the morning and you may repeat your call three or four times during the same day. (What the man does to get rid of you we have not yet discovered. We have only been the victims, not the visitors.)

You must refuse everything that is suddenly offered to you, except cigarettes or sweets offered in the fingers. Do not accept other things until the third offer. But to refuse sweets or cigarettes is almost insulting.

You must offer to give any object to anybody who admires it (especially objects of jewellery or babies).

You may ask any questions you like, even upon the most intimate of subjects; and you must expect to be asked similar questions.

If invited to a meal, you may refuse no dish that is served to you, even though indigestion is clutching at your vitals, or repletion stopping your throat.

For a specimen of the small tradesman class of the malecon we had La Merchora. She kept the village shop, the last house on the terrace, and was in some way a relative of Antonio. Her home was planned like ours was, and one of the rooms beside the entrada had been filled with a counter, some shelves, and a large tin of paraffin oil; ginger-coloured sausages were festooned from the roof and the shop was complete. She was unmarried, and therefore, from a theoretical point of view, negligible; but it did not disturb her. Indeed, little did disturb her. She had the figure which grows out of a combination of good living, no thinking and reasonable working. In any village you will find an example of her kind. She is good-natured but respected. Liberties are not taken with her, and in Cornwall she is called Aunt So-and-so. La Merchora was not even black-visaged, there was in fact nothing that one can count for Spanish about her.

She had two epithets—atrocidad and barbaridad—but she said them with so jovial an aspect that atrocity or barbarity faded into the gentlest of denunciations. When our first servant, Encarnacion's elder sister, deserted us without warning for a better job, La Merchora said it was an atrocidad; when the water-carrier overcharged us she said it was barbaridad. When the Count El Valle's watchman chased us off some square miles of unfenced unproductive mountain she said it was atrocidad; when the weather was hot she said it was barbaridad.

Every evening after supper there was a gathering outside La Merchora's shop. La Merchora, Uncle Pepe, her father, the niece, the gaunt woman from next door, her baby, half naked but with a flower in its hair, women coming through the night to fetch water (an interminable task), carters returning from work and others, would gather on chairs, benches, or on the stone wall of the malecon; and beneath the faint glow of the electric light would gently talk of things, while the niece was catching the foolish cicadas or crickets (attracted by the light) with which to amuse the baby and with which to awaken in the child some primary instinct of cruelty to animals.

Uncle Pepe was La Merchora's father. He was a withered brown peasant baked by the sun to the colour of a pot. Wrinkles of careful economy and of good humour were as indelibly roasted into him as the pattern on a Roman dish. In recognition of La Merchora's accumulated kindnesses I painted his portrait on a small panel for her. She pondered some while on the problem of a suitable recompense, and at last gave us an antique Sevillian basin decorated with a primitive painting of a yellow and green cat. It was an old and valuable piece of earthenware used for washing the linen, and had probably been employed to wash Uncle Pepe's shifts and himself as well when he was a baby. These basins, two feet in diameter, are used as decorative and practical adjuncts to the huge red earthenware pots in which the villagers of the Murcian valley store the household water. We protested against the generosity of this gift, but in vain. One day, while we were out, she had it carried to our house, and would on no account receive it back.

Pepe and La Merchora illustrate the rapid evolution of the modern Spanish gentleman. Antonio is the third stage in the development. The little Señor is the fourth. Pepe is an unlettered peasant, knowing nothing but the labour of the soil but possessing the traditional culture of Spain. By the time one has reached the little Señor and the people of the Baths, one has arrived at letters but one has lost much of the culture. Pepe's wisdom is the common sense of centuries stored up in proverbs; he has one to fit every occasion. The little Señor's learning is supplied by the newspapers. The grandparents of all these people, even of the rich merchants who lived on the apex or Verdolay hill, were peasantry—Pepes, as a rule. Then one perceives that with the accumulation of wealth, the culture gradually diminishes in a like proportion. The third generation has lost almost all culture and has nothing but a kind heart and a love of making money. The Spanish bourgeoisie is inverting the processes which are going forward in England to-day. It is trying to forget its old customs—too late we are trying to revive ours. It has learned to despise its exquisite folk music, already becoming forgotten—we are trying to fudge out a few miserable tunes from the memories of senile fiddlers.

These people have won to that leisure so sweet to the heart of man; but they don't know what to do with it. They sleep and so grow fat. Having become fat they are good-natured and laugh. The old saw should be inverted. Indeed, many an old saw is in reality the truth turned inside out. They were a good-natured kindly people, these bulky tradesmen, but they were deadly dull. The daughters of Verdolay banged untuned pianos to the strains of dances forgotten by Europe, polkas, mazurkas and pas de quatre; but their own dances—the malagueñas and baturras—were unknown to them. They were pressing in their invitations, and were angry with us because we preferred La Merchora's doorstep with its changing audience of passers-by.

Of the Count and the ex-Prime Minister we know but little; they lie, anyway, beyond the scope of this book. The Count possessed in this district a country house set in a deep, wooded valley, in which was a medicinal spring, and a few square miles of unfenced sterile mountain land from which his watchman, armed with a gun, was instructed to drive away unauthorized pedestrians. He was not popular and was always at daggers drawn with the village; though from other sources we have learned that he is personally a charming and a generous man. At any rate he has left a fine estate to remain practically unproductive (the two farms and the house itself are in ruins). This practice seems to be normal in Spain, and we have heard of many a case where the aristocracy have deliberately hindered national development. There are rumours, however, that this estate is being bought for the government and will be afforested and developed.

The ex-Prime Minister's villa was the most amazing example of bad taste in architecture that we have ever seen

CHAPTER XVIII

VERDOLAY—THE DANCE AT CONENI'S

We had been looking forward to the dance which Coneni had promised us. Spanish music had become with us a hobby, and the dancing which goes with it had excited our imagination. Antonio's sister had led us to believe that wonderful dancing was to be found in the Murcian huertas, and the vague hints of gay times al campo stirred us up to eager anticipation.

On Sunday afternoon at about four o'clock we set off, Jan carrying the big white guitar in its case. The cicadas were making their accustomed strident din in the mulberry trees, men on the roadside shouted to us: "Vaya con dios, y con la guitarra."

The Conenis were furbished up for the occasion. A few girls in bright cottons and a few young men in check suits, English caps and buttoned brilliant boots were awaiting us. Others came in one by one. Coneni chopped up a huge pink-fleshed melon for us, and while we were yet revelling in its cool lusciousness the faint sound of music was heard through the saw-note of the cicadas. The sound came nearer. Presently through the trees a band of youths and girls headed by a girl playing a guitar, and a boy of fourteen playing a Spanish lute (or laud) were visible.

They marched into the garden thrumming bravely a popular two-step march. It is the custom of the musicians thus to arrive in full cry, as it were. Amongst the group was the little Señor's nurse-maid bravely carrying through the heat the inevitable baby. Later on the baby caused a diversion by getting itself stung by a bee.

The arrival of the music drove Coneni to a pitch of excitement. He brought out a drinking flask of wine. The flask had a long slender spout, and the guests drank by pouring the wine straight into their mouths, tilting their heads backwards. I was afraid of this method, and to my disgrace had to be given a glass. Tables and chairs, made of rough planking, were brought from neighbouring huertas.

"Now," cried Coneni, "for some dancing."

The guitar and laud players sat down. They played a polka, a common polka. And the girls and English-capped youths danced a solemn polka. Then followed a schottische, then another polka, then a murdered two-step.

Disappointment rushed upon us.

But where then was the Spanish dancing? Had this infernal European mechanical civilization quite driven all feeling from the land? Where were the jotas, the malagueñas, the baturras?

"But," said Jan at last to Coneni, "can you not dance a Spanish dance?"

"Why, of course," cried Coneni. "Here, let us dance a malagueña. It is my favourite dance. Come, who will dance with me?"

But there was nobody amongst the girls who could dance it. Mrs. Coneni said that she was too old and too fat. Nor was there amongst the laud players one who could play a malagueña, nor could the guitar player beat the tempo.

So in the end it was Jan who played the malagueña as best he could, while Coneni, using his lank limbs with the flexibility of a youth, danced in marvellous fashion. But he soon tired of dancing solos.

We went home, headed by the band, seconded by Coneni's son carrying for us a large green melon, followed by Coneni's daughter loaded with a basket of figs.

We parted from the band at El Angel, we going up to Verdolay, they going across to Alverca, but with the good-byes the guitar playing girl said:

"Aha, but since you are so 'affectionate' to music we will come and play to you this evening at your house."

When Encarnacion heard this, she said:

"Oh, beautiful! And I will ask all my friends and we will dance. And I will bring all Mother's chairs."

We arranged all Encarnacion's mother's chairs in a neat circle in our entrada and waited. Nine o'clock went by—no music—ten passed and 10.30. At eleven o'clock we heard the band far away on the Alverca road. It came musically through the night. We had contrived an especial illumination of candles, but our guests repudiated houses. They were too hot. So in spite of any possible traffic the chairs were dragged out into the middle of the road, and we had our concert there.

It was not a very inspiring concert. At the opening of it the young laud player handed his instrument to Jan, demanding that it should be tuned. We discovered later that quite a number of the minor village executants cannot tune their own instruments. Jan, however, at this time knew nothing about lauds. So the boy had to do the best he could with it. He managed to worry the instrument more or less into tune with itself, but the task of getting his laud accorded with his sister's guitar was beyond his power. However, a concert could not be disturbed for so trifling a matter; and to the perfect satisfaction of the players, and, as far as we could see, of the audience, the two instruments played until about three o'clock in the morning, each one a semi-tone different in pitch from the other.

We had provided bottles of wine for the occasion at the cost of sixpence a bottle. This wine was the ordinary drinking wine of the district. It speaks well of the abstemiousness of the Spaniard that though we had at least thirty guests about half a bottle of wine only was drunk. The major part of the audience contented itself with cool water from the algazarra.

Some time later on in the evening the players confided to us that they were the pupils of a maestro who lived in Alverca, and that they had only been studying for two months. The fact that there was a teacher in Alverca fired me. I had wanted to learn the laud for some while, but the opportunity had not offered itself. I inquired his terms. The band said that they were twopence-halfpenny a lesson. So I at once told it to send the maestro along. At 3.30—after we had been wondering for some time how much longer our eyes would remain open—the band took its leave, saying that it would come again one evening. It then marched, playing loudly, back to Alverca.

The maestro sent word that he would come on Tuesday evening. He was of that type of southern European that the American terms "Dago." He was typically Dago. He was a plumber by trade, and in the evening augmented his income by odd twopence-halfpennies picked up from the would-be "affectionates" of the guitar or laud. He loved wine with a sincere though timid reverence. When she heard that he was coming to give me a lesson, Encarnacion said:

"Oh, beautiful! And we will all come and listen to your lesson, and afterwards we will dance."

But even Spain could not make me unselfconscious enough to support that test. With grim harshness we locked the door on our lessons.

The maestro, like Blas, considered two airs his daily portion. At the end of the first air he would empty his tumbler of wine, and would gently repudiate the idea that it should be refilled. The third glass he accepted with quite vehement protestations. His course homeward was, I fear, usually more discursive than that of his coming. Like all Spanish musicians he sang upon the slightest excuse. He corrected my melody by singing: "Lo, La, Lo, La, Lo, La," as I played.

Having played the violin, the mandolin and the piano, I did not find the laud very difficult. It has a queer tuning in fourths and is played with the plectrum. But when La Merchora discovered that I had learned a piece in two days she was quite eloquent in her astonishment

CHAPTER XIX

MURCIA—THE LAUD

During our month in Verdolay we had not quite cut off communication with Murcia. Luis and his friend Flores had come out to lunch with us, bringing with them a slab of odoriferous dried fish which they said was excellent in salads. On this occasion many families in Verdolay had offered to cook our dinner for us, Encarnacion's mother, the shopping woman, the woman who brought the water and La Merchora were the principal competitors; and the dinner was finally cooked out in the open in La Merchora's back-yard in a huge frying-pan. We had also travelled the five dusty miles into Murcia, walking, to the grave astonishment of Verdolay plutocracy. On the first occasion Antonio told us with a face of joy that his wife was out of danger.

"Out of danger," cried we; "but she was only suffering from a small digestive attack!"

"Oh, no," replied Antonio; "didn't I tell you that she had smallpox? Why, a man died of it three doors down the street."

Before we had quitted Verdolay, Rosa (Antonio's wife) was well enough to be moved, and Antonio had brought her into the country to the Count's country house. She was spotted like a pard with large brown marks which Antonio assured us would disappear with time, leaving no pits.

On another visit Jan had gone into the shop of Emilio Peralta to buy some guitar strings. The shop of Emilio was not like that of Ramirez in Paris. It was set in a canyon of a street so deep that the midday sun for one short hour or so shines on the cobbles, so narrow that the carts which pass through it are permitted to go in one sole direction marked at the entrance by a pointing arrow. Ramirez had a workshop only, but Emilio had as well on his working bench three brave showcases painted apple green, one of which was filled with instruments—guitars, lauds and bandurrias—with a drawer for strings, capo-d'astros and other instrumental appurtenances. Of the two other showcases, one housed the guitar-maker's tools, the third having degenerated to a pantry, and while one was buying strings from Emilio, his wife would be surreptitiously taking dishes of boiled garbanzos or of dried sardines out of the garishly painted frand. The place was indeed workshop, pantry and reception room. A counter cut the place in two. To the left as you entered Emilio made his instruments. To the right was a rough semicircle of chairs, and here the aficionados[19] of the guitar came in the evening, to play on Emilio's latest creation. To our dismay, however, we found that the intensely interesting music of Spain, the Flamenco, as it is called, was somewhat despised in Emilio's shop. In Spain, music is divided to-day into the major divisions, Classical and Flamenco. Classical includes anything from Beethoven to Darewski, from Sonata or Symphony to Fox-trot or Polka. The guitar-maker to-day says proudly: "I do not make instruments for 'Flamenco,' mine are made for 'Classical'": and he but echoes the bad taste of the educated Spaniard. The Flamenco, the native music, having perhaps a stronger character than any other Folk music in Europe, is considered very vulgar; it is called "Tavern Music," as "still lives" in painting are called "Tavern pictures."

Nevertheless, we were not to be seduced from our desire to study the Flamenco, and for the purpose of continuing that study I had been looking out for a laud which is peculiarly adapted to the music, much of which was composed originally upon this instrument. Hitherto I had been unable to find an instrument which I had liked, for the ordinary lute is queer in shape and rather harsh in quality. But the plumber-maestro in Alverca had lent me an instrument—a laud of simpler form and sweeter tone, called a sonora—which pleased me.

Jan going into Emilio's shop had found there a newly completed sonora, very like that of the little maestro's, but better in quality. He engaged Emilio to keep it till we returned, and Emilio said he would bring the Professor down to play it for us to show off its qualities. On the evening of the day on which we came back to Murcia we went to Emilio's shop. The chairs were all set in their prim semicircle and Emilio, round-shouldered and heavy-faced, sat us down while he expatiated on the excellence of the workmanship and the beauty of the tone of his instrument. He demanded sixty pesetas for the instrument, but said that we might possibly come to some friendly arrangement over the price, as he was trying to popularize this form of laud. The little Professor came in. He was a strange man. He was extremely emaciated, with one eye destroyed and almost blind in the other, dressed in outré style as though he were acting as jockey in an impromptu charade. His flexible hands seemed almost translucent in their delicacy. He at once addressed us with such rapidity of speech that we were unable to understand what he said (though our understanding of Spanish had made great progress), and he was extremely irritable with us for seeming so stupid. This frail, delicate, peering thing was a queer contrast to the burly, almost clumsy form of Emilio.

The little Professor picked up the sonora, and passed it backwards and forwards slowly beneath his short-sighted eye. He sat down and played. His nimble fingers ran up and down the strings. We had almost decided to begin the delicate matter of bargaining when a fat form, white-waist-coated, straw hat perched jauntily over an Egyptian face, showed itself in the doorway. It was Blas. And Blas was drunk. He bowed in an heroic manner to me, shook hands in simulated affection with Jan; and, his soul obviously consumed with jealousy, greeted the little Professor, who returned his salutation with coldness.

"Go on," ordered Blas to the little Professor, "play." The little man put the sonora again on his thigh. One could almost hear his teeth grit. Then he began to show off. He possessed a very effective trick of playing intricate runs by the mere beat of the fingers of his left hand, that is without plucking the strings with his right. This he now exhibited to its full. He was on his mettle, Greek and Trojan were face to face. Blas, seated on his chair, his fat hands on his knees, smiled a drunken and somewhat patronizing approval of his rival's exhibition.

The little Professor finished his exhibition, which the gipsy did not attempt to rival, for he played only the guitar. For a moment there was an embarrassing silence. The gentle art of bargaining was about to displace the art of music. But we had reckoned without the half-drunken Blas.

Suddenly rising to his feet he faced Jan, and rubbing his finger and thumb together he exclaimed:

"Now comes the main point. The brass. Now is the question of cashing up for it."

Doubtless this was a frank statement of fact. But three-quarters of life continues bearable enough because one does not put things frankly. Emilio changed colour and put on a sullen face, Emilio's wife looked alarmed, Jan was embarrassed, the little Professor seemed to wither into a crouching shape of half his normal smallness.

But Blas went on in a breezy voice to Jan:

"Come on, come on. What's the matter? You suggest a price to him and he will tell you if it fits."

Emilio's delicacy was quite revolted by this crude exhibition of gipsy bad taste. He seized the laud from the little Professor, thrust it on one side and said loudly that he did not want to sell it at all.

Unfortunately, Jan was afraid of offending Emilio's susceptibility. Not knowing how to behave in the unfortunate circumstances, he blurted out:

"Look here, Emilio, you said sixty pesetas. Will you not come down a little, and then we could settle the matter?"

Emilio was, however, extremely bad-tempered by the turn things had taken. The Spanish sense of decency was outraged. At last, with an evil look at Blas, he muttered:

"Well, fifty-five pesetas. Not a penny less and no more bargaining."

Jan, to cut the scene short, agreed. The instrument was wrapped up in a paper bag. While Jan was paying over the money, Blas said:

"And you will give five pesetas to this gentleman, who is a poor man: and five pesetas to me also."

He seized five pesetas of the money from the counter and pressed them on the little Professor. The latter, with girlish giggles, refused; but Blas, with the insistence of a drunkard, pressed his desire until, to quieten him, the little Professor slipped the money into his waistcoat pocket. Blas then demanded his own commission, saying that as he had been Jan's Professor, and as Jan had once mentioned the subject of the laud to him, he was fully entitled to his claim. But Jan, outwardly calm, inwardly annoyed with Blas, would not give him a halfpenny. At last Blas was begging:

"Well, at least give me a peseta to get a drink with."

"You have had enough drink already," said Jan.

He picked up the laud, and with farewells to Emilio, his wife and the little Professor we walked out of the shop, pushing our way through the crowd which had gathered at the shop door.

On the following day we returned to Emilio's shop to apologize for the contretemps. We found both Emilio and his wife very disturbed by what had happened. They said that their regrets were eternal, and that it would have been better had we deferred the business matter until a better occasion.

"It was a disgraceful affair," said Emilio, "disgraceful; and to cap it all, after you had gone, Blas was most outrageous. We had actually to pay him two pesetas to go away."

"We were afraid for our lives," said Mrs. Emilio. "He is a bad man, and one never knows what rogues he might have brought upon us."

Though Jan did not believe much in the active danger of Blas, yet the terror of Emilio and of his wife was quite evident. So in the end he disbursed the five pesetas given to the little Professor as well as the two given to Blas. So that our laud actually cost us sixty-two pesetas, instead of the sixty for which we might have bought it without any bargaining.

With the little Professor we had made an engagement for the afternoon. He was to give me a lesson on which I could study while we were away at Jijona. He came, feeling his way up our staircase. He shook hands with us and said that the affair of last night had greatly oppressed his spirit.

"I felt it much in my heart," he said.

We explained to him that we were going away for a month, but that we would return to Murcia later, and that when we returned I would take lessons from him.

"My price," he exclaimed (all his speech was exclamation), "is one duro a month. I am not one of those villains who charge one price to one person and a different price to another. No, my price is fixed and unalterable. One duro, five pesetas, a month."

Now, although this little man was probably as good a teacher as could be found in the town of Murcia, his price averaged about twopence a lesson.

We discovered later that the laud suffers not only from a ban of "bad taste," but also from a moral one. To-day its use in Spain is almost limited to the playing of dance music in houses of bad fame

CHAPTER XX

ALICANTE

Our second experience in Spanish village life was to be at Jijona, a small town in the country near Alicante. Our friend had what he called a studio there, and this was at our service. Luis said that there was furniture in the studio but no cooking utensils or bed. After our packing-case bed in Verdolay, we determined to take with us nothing but a mattress and either to sleep on the floor or to buy planks locally. So we had packed our trunk with painting materials, crockery and clothes. We had also made up a large roll of bedclothes and mattress such as emigrants travel with. Having risen with the dawn, our preparations were complete by the time at which the donkeyman who peddled drinking-water about the streets of Murcia called for us with his long cart. He was not quite satisfied with our roll, and with expert hands repacked it in a professional manner. But his long water-cart would only take our trunk and the rolled mattress, so, burdened with rucksacks, camera, guitar, thermos flasks and a rush basket containing crockery which would not pack into the trunk, and the laud, we walked the quarter of a mile to the station. Thus burdened, we expected more staring and laughter than before from the Murcianos, but, to our amazement, the people looked upon us with kindly eyes and wished us God-speed. Thus Spain reverses the manner of England.