"The Sierra Nevada, an enormous dove which shelters under its
most spotless wings Saracen Granada."--ALARCON: _Los Seis
Velos_.
Our surprises were by no means over. We had come to Granada to bask in
the quintessence of earthly sunshine, and we found bleak rains, dark
skies, and influenza. The Moorish palace was indeed as wonderful as
our lifelong dream of it,--arched and columned halls of exquisite
fretwork, walls of arabesque where flushes and glints of color linger
yet, ceilings crusted with stalactite figures of tapering caprice, but
all too chill, even if the guides would cease from troubling, for
tarrying revery. We tarried, nevertheless, were enraptured, and caught
cold. We were dwelling in the village on the Alhambra hill, within the
circuit of the ruined fortress, in a villa kept by descendants of the
Moors, but the insolent grippe microbe respected neither ancient blood
nor republican. During the month of our residence, every member of the
household was brought low in turn, and there were days when even the
stubborn Yankees retreated to their pillows, lulled by the howling of
as wild March winds as ever whirled the grasshopper vane on Faneuil
Hall. From beyond the partition sounded the groans of our
fever-smitten hostess, and from the kitchen below arose the noise of
battle between our sturdy host and the rebel spoons and sauce-pans. If
we could not always swallow his bold experiments in gruel and
porridge, we could always enjoy the roars of laughter with which that
merry silversmith plied his unaccustomed labors. It is said that there
are only three months of the year when Granada is fit to live in, and
certainly February and March are not of these. But our delighted
spirits had no thought of surrender to our discomfited bodies. We
would not go away. It is better to ache in beautiful Granada than to
be at ease elsewhere.
At the first peep of convalescence, we fled out of doors in search of
a sunbeam and discovered, again to our surprise, this immemorial
Alhambra hill as young as springtime. The famous fragments of towers,
with their dim legends of enchantment, all those tumbled masses of
time-worn, saffron-lichened masonry, are tragically old, yet the
tender petals of peach blossoms, drifting through the fragrant air,
lay pink as baby touches against those hoary piles. We rested beside
many an ancient ruin overclambered by red rosebuds or by branches
laden with the fresh gold of oranges, where thrushes practised songs
of welcome for the nightingales. We were too early for these sweetest
minstrels of the Alhambra, who, like the Moors of long ago, were
yearning on the edge of Africa for the Vega of Granada.
One expects, shut in by the crumbling walls of the Alhambra, in shadow
of the ruddy towers, in sound of the Moslem fountains, to live with
dreams and visions for one's company, to have no associates less
dignified than the moonlight cavalcades of shadowy Arabian warriors,
whom the mountain caverns cast forth at stated seasons to troop once
more in their remembered ways, or lustrous-eyed, lute-playing
sultanas, or, at least, a crook-backed, snow-bearded magician, with a
wallet full of talismans, and footsteps that clink like the gold of
buried treasure. But here again the eternal fact of youth in the world
disconcerts all venerable calculations. The Alhambra dances and laughs
with children--ragamuffins, most of them, but none the less radiant
with the precious joy of the morning.
They are gentle little people, too. It became well known on the hill
that we were Americans, yet not a pebble or rude word followed us from
the groups of unkempt boys among whom we daily passed. Once a mimic
regiment, with a deafening variety of unmusical instruments and a
genuine Spanish flag, charged on me roguishly and drew up in battle
square about their prisoner, but it was only to troll the staple song
of Spanish adolescence: "I want to be a soldier," and when I had
munificently rewarded the captain with a copper, the youngsters doffed
their varied headgear, dipped their banner in martial salute, and
contentedly re-formed their ranks. It was seldom that we gave money,
but we usually carried _dulces_ for the little ones, who, even the
dirtiest, have their own pretty standard of manners.
Some half-dozen _pequenitos_, not one of whom was clearly out of
petticoats, were scampering off one day, for instance, their thanks
duly spoken, and their bits of candy just between hand and mouth, when
they turned with one accord, as if suddenly aware of an abruptness in
their leave-taking, and trotted back to bow them low, their tatters of
cap sweeping the ground, and lisp with all Spanish gravity, "Good
afternoon, senora." One chubby hidalgo tipped over with the
profundity of his obeisance, but the others righted him so solemnly
that the dignity of the ceremonial was unimpaired.
The habit of begging, that plague of tourist resorts, is an incessant
nuisance on the Alhambra hill. Half-grown girls and young women were
the most shameless and persistent of our tormentors. Age can be
discouraged, and babyhood diverted, while the Spanish boy, if his
importunities are met by smile and jest, will break into a laugh in
the midst of his most pathetic appeals and let you off till next time.
"A little money for our Blessed Lady's sake, senora. I am starving."
"Wouldn't you rather have a cigarette?"
"And that I would."
"Then you are not starving, little brother. Run away. I have no
cigarettes."
"But you have money for me, senora."
"No, nor enough for myself, not enough to buy one tile of the
Alhambra."
"Then may God take care of you!"
"And of you!"
[Illustration: PLAYING AT BULL-FIGHT]
But the wild-haired, jet-eyed gypsy girl from the Albaicin is
impervious to mirth and untouched by courtesy. She would not do us the
honor of believing our word, even when we were telling the truth.
"Five _centimos_ to buy me a scarlet ribbon! Five _centimos_!"
"Not to-day, excuse me. I have no change."
"Hoh! You have change enough. Look in your little brown bag and see."
"I have no change."
"Then give me a _peseta_. Come, now, a whole _peseta_!"
"But why should I give you a _peseta_?"
The girl stares like an angry hawk.
"But why shouldn't you?" Darting away, she hustles together a group of
toddlers, hardly able to lisp, and drives them on to the attack.
"Beg, Isabelita! Beg of the lady, little Conception! Beg, Alfonsito!
Beg, beg, beg! Beg five _centimos_, ten _centimos_! Beg a _peseta_ for
us all!"
And out pop the tiny palms, and the babble of baby voices makes a
pleading music in the air. It is for such as these that the little
brown bag has learned to carry _dulces_.
Before the month was over we had, in a slow, grippe-chastened fashion,
"done our Baedeker." We had our favorite courts and corridors in the
magical maze of the Moorish palace; we knew the gardens and fountains
of the _Generalife_, even to that many-centuried cypress beneath whose
shade the Sultana Zoraya was wont to meet her Abencerrage lover; our
fortunes had been told in the gypsy caves of the Albaicin; we had
visited the stately Renaissance cathedral where, in a dim vault, the
"Catholic Kings," Ferdinand and Isabella, take their royal rest; we
had made a first acquaintance with the paintings of the fire-tempered
Granadine, Alonso Cano, and paid our dubious respects to the convent
of Cartuja, with its over-gorgeous ornament and its horrible pictures
of Spanish martyrdoms inflicted by that "devil's bride," Elizabeth of
England. We had explored the parks and streets of the strange old
city, where we possessed, according to the terms of Spanish
hospitality, several houses; but better than the clamorous town we
liked our own wall-girdled height, with its songful wood of English
elms, planted by the Duke of Wellington, its ever murmuring runlets
of clear water, its jessamines and myrtles, its Arabian Nights of
mosque and tower, and its far outlook over what is perhaps the most
entrancing prospect any hill of earth can show. The sunset often found
us leaning over the ivied wall beneath the _Torre de la Vela_, that
bell-tower where the first cross was raised after the Christian
conquest, gazing forth from our trellised garden-nook on a vast
panorama of gray city all quaintly set with arch and cupola, of
sweeping plain with wealth of olive groves, vineyards, orange
orchards, pomegranates, aloes, and cypresses, bounded by glistening
ranks of snow-cloaked mountains. From the other side of the Alhambra
plateau, the fall is sheer to the silver line of the Darro. Across the
river rises the slope of the Albaicin, once the chosen residence of
Moorish aristocracy, but now dotted over, amid the thickets of cactus
and prickly pear, with whitewashed entrances to gypsy caves. Beyond
all shine the resplendent summits of the great Sierras.
Yet it is strange how homely are many of the memories that spring to
life in me at the name of the Alhambra,--decorous donkeys, laden with
water-jars, trooping up the narrow footpath to the old Fountain of
Tears, herds of goats clinging like flies to the upright precipice, a
lurking peasant darting out on his wife as she passes with a day's
earnings hidden in her stocking and holding her close, with laughter
and coaxing, while he persistently searches her clothing until he
finds and appropriates that copper hoard, and our own cheery little
house-drudge washing our linen in a wayside rivulet and singing like a
bird as she rubs and pounds an unfortunate handkerchief between two
haphazard stones:--
"I like to live in Granada,
It pleases me so well
When I am falling asleep at night
To hear the _Vela_ bell."
There is the proud young mother, too, whom we came upon by chance over
behind the Tower of the Princesses, where her pot of _puchero_ was
bubbling above a miniature bonfire, while the velvet-eyed baby boy
sucked his thumb in joyous expectation. She often made us welcome,
after that, to her home,--a dingy stone kitchen and bedroom,
unfurnished save for pallet, a few cooking-utensils, a chest or two,
and, fastened to the wall, a gaudy print of _La Virgen de las
Angustias_, the venerated _Patrona_ of Granada. But this wretched
abode, the remains of what may once have been a palace, opened on a
lordly pleasure-garden with walls inlaid with patterns of rainbow
tiles, whose broken edges were hidden by rose bushes. There were
pedestals and even fragments of images in this wild Eden, jets of
sparkling water and walks of variegated marble. In the course of the
month, English and Spanish callers climbed the hill to us and
encompassed us with kindness, but we still maintained our incorrigible
taste for low society and used to hold informal receptions on sunny
benches for all the tatterdemalions within sight. Swarthy boys,
wearied with much loafing, would thriftily lay aside their cigarettes
to favor us with conversation, asking many questions about America,
for whose recent action they gallantly declined to hold us
responsible. "It was not the ladies that made the war," said these
modern cavaliers of the Alhambra.
Their especial spokesman was a shambling orphan lad of some fifteen
summers, with shrewd and merry eyes. Nothing pleased him better than
to give an ornamental hitch to the shabby, bright-colored scarf about
his thin, brown throat, and proceed to expound the political
situation.
"You admire the Alhambra? I suppose you have no palaces in America
because your Government is a republic. That is a very good thing. Our
Government is the worst possible. All the loss falls on the poor. All
the gain goes to the rich. But there are few rich in Spain. America is
the richest country of all the world. When America fought us it was as
a rich man, fed and clothed, fighting a poor man weak from famine. And
the rich man took from the poor man all that he had. Spain has nothing
left--nothing."
"Oh, don't say that! Spain has the Alhambra, and beautiful churches,
beautiful pictures."
"Can one eat churches and pictures, my lady?"
"And a fertile soil. What country outblooms Andalusia?"
His half-shod foot kicked the battle-trampled earth of the immortal
hill contemptuously.
"Soil! Yes. All the world has soil. It serves to be buried in."
This budding politician graced us with his company one Sunday
afternoon, when we went down into Granada to see a religious
procession. Our Lady of Lourdes, escorted by a distinguished train of
ecclesiastical and civic dignitaries, with pomp of many shining lights
and sonorous instruments, with peal of church bells and incongruous
popping of fireworks, passed through extended ranks of candle-bearing
worshippers, along thronged streets, where every balcony was hung with
the national red and yellow, to the Church of Mary Magdalene. There
the sacred guest was entertained with a concert, and thence conducted,
with the same processional state, amid the same reverent salutations
of the multitude, back to her own niche. Our youthful guide showed
himself so devout on this occasion, kneeling whenever the image, borne
aloft in a glory of flowers and tapers, passed us, and gazing on every
feature of the pageant with large-eyed adoration, that we asked him,
as we climbed the hill again, if he would like to be a priest. But he
shrugged his shoulders. "There are better Christians in Spain than the
priests," he answered.
The son of the house, Don Pepe, a young man of five and twenty, who
usually attended us on any difficult excursion, was also frankly
outspoken in his disapproval of the clergy. He could hardly hold his
countenance in passing a Franciscan friar. "There walks the ruin of
Spain," he muttered once, with bitter accent, turning to scowl after
the bareheaded, brown-frocked figure so common in Granada streets. We
had, indeed, our own little grudge against the friars, for they were
the only men of the city who forced us off the narrow sidewalks out
into the rough and dirty road. All other Granadines, from dandies to
gypsies, yielded us the strip of pavement with ready courtesy, but the
friars, three or four in Indian file, would press on their way like
graven images and drive us to take refuge among the donkeys.
This escort of ours, formally a Catholic, was no more a lover of State
than of Church. He was eager to get to work in the world and, finding
no foothold, charged up his grievance against the Government. He was
firmly persuaded that Madrid had sold the Santiago and Manila
victories to Washington for sums of money down,--deep down in
official pockets. But his talk, however angry, would always end in
throwing out the hands with a gesture of despair.
"But what use in revolutions? Spain is tired--tired of tumult, tired
of bloodshed, tired of deceit and disappointment. A new government
would only mean the old dogs with new collars. We, the people, are
always the bone to be gnawed bare. What use in anything? Let it go as
God wills."
The Silvela and Polavieja ministry came in during our stay at Granada,
and the Liberal and Republican chorus against what was known as the
Reactionary Government swelled loud. "It means the yoke of the
Jesuits," growled our burly host. Our Alhambra dream suffered frequent
jars from these ignoble confusions of to-day. When we were musing
comfortably on the melancholy fortunes of Boabdil, a cheap newspaper
would be thrust before our eyes with an editorial headed "Boabdil
Sagasta." It is always best to do what one must. Since we could not be
left in peace to the imagination of plumy cavaliers, stars of Moslem
and Christian chivalry, who sowed this mount so thick with glorious
memories, we turned our thoughts to the poor soldiers from Cuba,
especially during the week throughout which they paraded the cities of
Spain in rag-tag companies under rude flags with the ruder motto:
"_Hungry Repatriados_." Their appearance was so woful that it became a
by-word. A child, picking up from a gutter one day a mud-stained,
dog-eared notebook, cried gleefully, "It's a _repatriado_." There was
no glamour here, but the courage and sacrifice, the love and anguish,
held good.
Granada had borne her share in Spain's last war sorrow. So many of her
sons were drafted for the Antilles that her anger against America
waxed hot. A few months before our arrival every star-spangled banner
that could be hunted out in shop or residence was trampled and burned
in the public squares. The Washington Irving Hotel hastened to take
down its sign, and even the driver of its omnibus was sternly warned
by the people to erase those offensive American names from his vehicle
on pain of seeing it transformed into a chariot of fire. A shot,
possibly accidental, whistled through the office of the English
consul, who was given to understand, in more ways than one, that Spain
made little difference between "the cloaked enemy" and the foe in the
field. Meanwhile, month after month, the recruits were marched to the
station, and the City Fathers, who came in all municipal dignity to
bid the lads godspeed, were so overwhelmed by the weeping of the women
that they forgot the cream of their speeches.
Among the new tales of Spanish valor told us on the Alhambra hill was
this:--
When lots were drawn for military service, one blithe young scapegrace
found in his hand a fortunate high number, but, walking away in fine
feather over his luck, he met the mother of a friend of his, sobbing
wildly as she went. Her son had been drafted, and the two hundred
dollars of redemption money was as far beyond her reach as those
dazzling crests of the Sierra Nevada are above the lame beggar at the
Alhambra gate. Then the kindly fellow, troubled by her grief and
mindful of the fact that, orphan as he was, his own parting would be
at no such cost of tears, offered to serve in her boy's stead. Her
passion of gratitude could not let his service go all unrecompensed.
Poorest of the poor, she went about among her humble friends, lauding
his deed, until she had collected, _peseta_ by _peseta_, the sum of
sixteen dollars, which she thrust into his hands to buy comforts for
the campaign. But another sobbing mother sought him out. He had saved
her neighbor's son; would he not save hers? Laughing at her logic and
moved by her faith in him, he answered: "I am only one man, senora. I
cannot go in place of two. But here are sixteen dollars. If you can
find a substitute at such a price, the money is yours."
Sixteen dollars is a fortune to hunger and nakedness, and the
substitute was found. As the year wore on those two mothers did not
let the city forget its light-hearted hero, and a great assembly
gathered at the station to honor his return. A remnant of his comrades
descended from the train, but as for him, they said, he had died in
Cuba of the fever months before.
His was no poetic death like that of the Abencerrages. Happy
Abencerrages! They knew the Alhambra in the freshness of her beauty.
Their last uplifted glances looked upon the most exquisite ceilings in
the world. Their blood left immortal stains on the marble base of the
fountain. But this young Spaniard, in his obscure Cuban grave, only
one out of the eighty thousand, will promptly be forgotten. _No
importa._ There must be something better than glory for the man who
does more than his duty.
[Illustration: THE MOSQUE OF CORDOVA]