RANKS upon ranks of rastaquoères, Brazilians, Roumanians, Russians,
Bulgarians, with battalions of Americans, all seated round the “piazza”
of the Grand Hotel. Ladies from Boston, Chicago, and New York, their
heels too high, their petticoats too much belaced, their Empire combs
bediamonded so as to look almost like cut-glass chandeliers, as in their
chairs they sat and read the latest news from Tampa, Santiago, and how
Cervera’s Squadron met the fate which they (the ladies) reckoned God
prepares for those who dare to fight against superior odds.
Outside upon the boulevards, cocottes, guides, cabmen, and androgynous
young men, touts, and all those who hang about that caravansary where the
dulcet Suffolk whine, made sharper by the air of Massachusetts, sounds,
passed and repassed.
Smug-faced, black-coated citizens from Buffalo and Albany, and from
places like Detroit and Council Bluffs, to which the breath of fashion
has not penetrated, scanned the _New York Herald_, read the glorious
news, and, taking off their hats, deigned publicly to recognize the
existence of a God, and after standing reverently silent, masticating
their green cigars in contemplation of His wondrous ways, to take a
drink.
Aquatic plants and ferns known only to hotels, and constituting a
sub-family of plants, which by the survival of the ugliest have come at
last to stand gas, dust, saliva, and an air befogged with Chypre, grew in
the fountain where, in the tepid water, gold fish with swollen eyes, and
blotched with patches of unhealthy white, swam to and fro, picking up
crumbs and rising to the surface when some one threw a smoked-out
cigarette into the basin, in the midst of which a fig-leaved Naiad held a
stucco shell.
The corridors were blocked with Saratoga trunks; perspiring porters
staggered to and fro, bending beneath the weight of burdens compared to
which a sailor’s chest is as a pill-box.
All went well; the tapes clicked off their international lies, detailing
all the last quotations of the deep mines upon the Rand, the fall in
Spanish Fours; in fact, brought home to those with eyes to see, the way
in which the Stock Exchange had put a rascals’ ring around the globe.
Waiters ran to and fro, their ears attuned to every outrage upon French,
seeking to find the meaning of the jargons in which they were addressed.
Majestic butlers in black knee-breeches, and girt about the neck with
great brass chains, moved slowly up and down, so grave and so respectable
that had you laid your hands upon any one of them and made a bishop of
him he would have graced the post.
Mysterious, well-dressed men sat down beside you, and after a few words
proposed to take you in the evening to show you something new.
Women walked to and fro, glaring at one another as they had all been
tigresses, or again, catching each other’s eyes, reddened, and looked
ashamed, as if aware, though strangers, that they understood the workings
of the other’s heart.
Burano chandeliers and modern tapestry, with red brocade on the two
well-upholstered chairs, imparted beauty and a look of wealth, making one
feel as if by striking an electric bell a door would open and a troop of
half-dressed women file into the court, after the fashion of another kind
of inn.
Outside the courtyard Paris roared, chattered, and yelped, cycles and
automobiles made the poor _piéton’s_ life a misery, and set one thinking
how inferior after all the Mind which thought out Eden was to our own.
Upon the asphalt the horizontales lounged along, pushing against the
likely-looking passer-by like cats against a chair.
Cabs rattled, and the whole _clinquant_ town wore its best air of
unreality, which it puts off alone upon the morning of a revolution.
Through boulevards, parvis, cités, along the quays, in the vast open
spaces which, like Saharas of grey stone, make the town desolate, in
cafés, brothels, theatres, in church and studio, and wherever men most
congregate, groups stood about reading the news, gesticulating, weeping,
perspiring, and agog with a half-impotent enthusiastic orgasm of wildest
admiration for Spain, Cervera, and the men who without bunkum or illusion
steamed to certain death. And, curiously enough, the execration fell not
so much upon Chicago as on “ces cochons d’Anglais,” who by their base
connivance had wrought the ruin of the Spanish cause.
Yankees themselves read and remarked with sneers that England’s turn was
coming next, and after “Kewby,” that they reckoned to drag the British
flag through every dunghill in New York; then one winked furtively and
said, “We need them now, but afterwards we’ll show Victoria in a cage for
a picayune a peep, and teach the Britishers what to do with their old
Union Jack,” thinking no doubt of the ten-cent paper which is sold in
every city of the States, stamped with the Spanish flag.
And as I sat, musing on things and others—thinking, for instance, that
when you scratch a man and see his blood you know his nature by the way
he bears his wound, and that the Spaniards, wounded to the death, were
dying game (after the fashion of the English in times gone by, before
Imperialism, before the Nonconformist snuffle, the sweating system, and
the rest had changed our nature), and that the Yankees at the first touch
cried out like curs, though they had money, numbers, and everything upon
their side—I fell a-thinking on the Spain of old. Inigo Lopez de
Mendoza, el Gran Capitan, Cortes (not at the siege of Mexico, but in the
rout before Algiers) came up before me, and I thought on the long
warfare, extending over seven hundred years, by which Spain saved the
southern half of Europe from the Moors; upon Gerona, Zaragoza, and, most
of all, upon Cervera, last of the Quixotes, Vara de Rey, Linares, and the
poor peasants from Galician hills, thyme-scented wastes in Lower Aragon,
Asturian mountains, and Estremenian oak-woods, who, battling against
superior numbers, short of food, of ammunition, and bereft of hope, were
proving their descent from the grim soldiers of the Spanish “Tercios” of
the Middle Ages, and making the invaders of their country pay for their
piracy in blood.
Blood is the conqueror’s coin the whole world over, and if the island
which Columbus found for Spain pass into other hands, let those who take
it pour out their blood like water to inaugurate their reign of peace.
Where the connection between the senses and the brain comes in, which
influences first, and how, or whether a wise Providence, always upon His
guard (after the fashion of an operator in a Punch and Judy show),
influences each man directly, as by celestial thought suggestion, I
cannot tell.
All that I know is, that once walking on the rampart gardens which in
Cadiz overhang the sea and form the outside rim of the “Taza de Plata,”
as the Spaniards call the town, I on a sudden saw the River Plate. The
Gauchos, plains, wild horses, the stony wastes, the ostriches (the
“Alegria del Desierto”), came up before me, and in especial a certain
pass over a little river called the Gualiyan; the sandy dip, the
metallic-looking trees, the greenish river with the flamingoes and white
herons and the black-headed swans; the vultures sitting motionless on the
dead trees, and most of all the penetrating scent of the mimosa, known to
the natives as the “espinillo de olor.”
Turning and wondering why, I saw a stunted tree with yellow blossoms duly
ticketed with its description “Mimosa” this or that, and with its
“habitat” the warmer district of the River Plate.
I leave these things to wise philosophers and to those men of science who
seem to think mankind is worth the martyrdom of living dogs and cats; or
who, maybe, drag out the entrails of their quivering fellow-mortals
merely to stimulate their senses or erotic powers.
But the “dwawm” over, looking about, fenced in by swarms of overjoyed
Americans, all talking shrilly, reading out the news, exultant at the
triumph of their fleet, puffed up and arrogant as only the descendants of
the Puritans can be, I saw a Spaniard sitting with his daughter, a girl
about nineteen.
Himself a Castellano rancio, silent and grave, dressed all in black,
moustache waxed to a point, square little feet like boxes, brown little
hands, face like mahogany, hair cropped close, and with the unillusional
fatalistic air of worldly wisdom mixed with simplicity which
characterizes Spaniards of the older school.
Being a Christian, he spoke no tongue but that which Christians use, was
proud of it, proud of his ignorance, proud (I have no doubt) of his
descent.
No doubt he saw everything through the clear dazzling atmosphere of old
Castille, which Spaniards of his kind seem to condense and carry off with
them for use in other climes.
Seeing so clearly, he saw nothing clear, for the intelligence of man is
so contrived as to be ineffective if a mist of some sort is not
interposed.
The daughter fair, fair with the fairness of a Southern, blue-eyed, and
skin like biscuit china, hands and feet fine, head well set on, and yet
with the decided gestures and incisive speech, the “aire recio,” and the
“meneo” of the hips in walking, of the women of her race.
They sat some time before a pile of newspapers, the father smoking
gravely, taking down the smoke as he were drinking it, and then in a few
minutes breathing it out to serve as an embellishment to what he said,
holding his cigarette meanwhile fixed in a little silver instrument
contrived like two clasped hands.
The Spanish newspapers were, of course, all without news, or said they
had none, and as the daughter read, the old man punctuated with
“Valiente,” “Pobrecitas,” and the like, when he heard how before El
Caney, Vara de Rey had died, or how the Americans had shot the three
Sisters of the Poor whose bodies were found lying with lint and medicine
in their hands.
“Read me the papers of the Americans, hija de mi corazon,” and she began,
translating as she read.
Reading of the whole agony, choking but self-possessed, she read: the
_Vizcaya_, _Almirante Oquendo_, and the rest; the death of Villamil, he
who at least redeemed the promise made to the Mother of his God in Cadiz
before he put to sea.
And as she read the old man gave no sign, sitting impassive as a fakir,
or like an Indian warrior at the stake.
She went on reading; the fleet steamed through the hell of shot and
shell, took fire, was beached, blew up, and still he gave no sign.
Cervera steps on board the conqueror’s ship, weeping, gives up his sword,
and the old man sat still.
When all was finished, and the last vessel burning on the rocks, slowly
the tears fell down his old brown cheeks, and he broke silence. “Virgen
de Guadalupe, has not one escaped?” and the girl, looking at him through
her now misty eyes, “No, papa, God has so willed it. . . . What is wrong
with your moustache?”
Then, with an effort, he took down his grief, said quietly, “I must
change my hairdresser,” got up, and offering his daughter his arm, walked
out impassible, through the thick ranks of the defeated foe.