"O LA SENORITA!"
"Since the English education came into fashion, there is not a
maiden left who can feel true love."--ALARCON.
During my stifling night journey from Madrid to the north I had much
chat with Castilian and German ladies in the carriage about Spanish
girls. Our talk turned especially on their reading, so reminding me of
an incident of the past spring. On an Andalusian balcony I once found
a little girl curled up in the coolest corner and poring over a
shabby, paper-bound book. On my expressing interest in the volume, she
presented it at once, according to the code of Spanish manners. "The
book is at the disposal of your worship." But as the bundle of
tattered leaves was not only so precious to her own small worship, but
also greatly in demand among her worshipful young mates, whose
constant borrowing seemed a strain even on Andalusian courtesy, I
retained it merely long enough to note the title and general
character. The next time I entered a book-shop I expended ten cents
for this specimen of juvenile literature--"the best-selling book in
Seville," if the clerk's word may be taken--and have it before me as I
write. On the cover is stamped a picture of two graceful senoritas,
perusing, apparently, this very work, "The Book of the Enamored and
the Secretary of Lovers," and throughout the two hundred pages are
scattered cheap cuts, never indecent, but suggesting violent ardors of
passion--embracings, kissings, gazings, pleadings, with hearts,
arrows, torches, and other ancient and honorable heraldry of Cupid.
The title-page announces that this is a fifth edition of ten thousand
copies.
[Illustration: THE DIVINE SHEPHERD]
The opening section is on "Love and Beauty," enumerating, by the way,
the "thirty points" essential to a perfect woman. "Three things
white--skin, teeth, and hands. Three black--eyes, eyebrows, and
eyelashes. Three rosy--lips, cheeks, and nails." But warning is duly
given that even the thirty points of beauty do not make up a sum total
of perfection without the mystic, all-harmonizing quality of charm.
Next in order are the several sets of directions for winning the
affections of maid, wife, and widow, with a collection of edifying
sentiments from various saints and wits concerning widows.
Descriptions of wedding festivities follow, with a glowing
dissertation on kisses, "the banquet-cups of love." After this stands
a Castilian translation of an impassioned Arab love-song with the
burden, _Todo es amor_. Maxims on love, culled chiefly from French
authorities, are succeeded by an eighteenth-century love-catechism:--
"_Question._ Art thou a lover?
_Answer._ Yes, by the grace of Cupid.
_Question._ What is a lover?
_Answer._ A lover is one who, having made true and faithful
declaration of his passion, seeks the means of gaining the love
of her whom he adores."
This is the first lesson. The second treats of the five signs of love,
the third of love's duties, the fourth gives the orison of lovers--a
startling adaptation of the Lord's Prayer--and their creed: "I believe
in Cupid, absolute Lord of Love, who gives to lovers all their joys,
and in her whom I love most, for most lovable is she, on whom I think
without ceasing, and for whom I would sacrifice gladly my honor and my
life."
There is nothing here, it will be noticed, of the Englishman's proud
exception:--
"I could not love thee, Dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more."
Love has its own beatitudes, too. "Blessed are they who love
sincerely. Blessed are they of merry mood. Blessed are lovers who have
patience. Blessed are the rich, for love delights to spend."
A "Divination of Dreams," "copied from an ancient manuscript found in
the ruins of the convent of San Prudencio, in Clavijo," that famous
battle-ground where St. James first trampled the Moors, next engages
attention. To dream of a fan is sign of a coming flirtation; of a
banner, success in war; of a woman's singing, sorrow and loss; of
stars, fair fortune in love; of fire, good luck at cards; of a black
cat, trouble from the mother-in-law; of closed eyes, your child in
mortal peril; of birds, joy and sweet content; of a ghost, ill health;
of scissors, a lover's quarrel; of wine, a cheating Frenchman; of
shoes, long journeys; of angels, good tidings from far away. Some of
these omens are a surprise to the uninitiated reader. It is bad luck
to behold in a dream images of Christ and the Virgin. A church, seen
from within, denotes alms; from without, death. To dream of the altar
arrayed for high mass betokens grave misfortune. Other omens are
significant of Spanish discontents. To dream of a Jesuit brings
miseries and betrayals; of a military officer, tyranny and brutality;
of a king, danger; of a republic, "abundance, happiness, honors, and
work well recompensed." Often these divinations run into rhyme, as:--
"Dream of God at midnight dim,
And by day you'll follow Him."
The next section of this Complete Guide is given over to snatches of
love-song, which Andalusian children know by heart. These five are
fairly representative:--
"Mine is a lover well worth the loving.
Under my balcony he cries:
'You have maddened me with your grace of moving,
And the beaming of your soft black eyes.'"
"Though thou go to the highest heaven,
And God's hand draw thee near,
The saints will not love thee half so well
As I have loved thee here."
"If I had a blossom rare,
I would twine it in thy hair,
Though God should stoop and ask for it
To make His heaven more exquisite."
"Such love for thee, sent forth from me,
Bears on such iron gate
That I, used so, no longer know
Whether I love or hate."
"The learned are not wise,
The saints are not in bliss;
They have not looked into your eyes,
Nor felt your burning kiss."
Then comes a "New Dictionary of Love," defining some two hundred
doubtful terms in Cupid's lexicon, as _forever_, _no_, _unselfish_.
After this we are treated to the language of fan flirtation, of
handkerchief flirtation, of flower flirtation, and "the clock of
Flora," by which lovers easily make appointments,--one, two, three,
being numbered in rose, pink, tulip, and so on. A cut of a youth
toiling at a manuscript-laden desk introduces some fifty pages of
model love-letters, which seem, to the casual eye, to cover all
contingencies. A selection of verses used for adding a grace to
birthday and saint-day gifts comes after, and this all-sufficient
compendium concludes with a "Lovers' Horoscope."
A single illustration of the sort of reading that Spanish girls find
in their way should not, of course, be pressed too far, and yet any
one who had seen the pretty group of heads clustered for hours over
these very pages on that shaded balcony would not deny the book
significance. A taste for the best reading is not cultivated in
Spanish girls, even where the treasures of that great Castilian
literature are accessible to them. Convent education knows nothing of
Calderon. As for books especially adapted to girlhood, we have just
examined a sample.
Love and religion are the only subjects with which a senorita is
expected to concern herself, and the life of the convent is often a
second choice. Even when a Spanish girl wins her crown of wifehood
and motherhood, her ignorance and poverty of thought tell heavily
against the most essential interests of family life. The Spanish bride
is often a child in years. Pacheco's direction for painting the
Immaculate Conception ran, "Our Lady is to be pictured in the flower
of her age, from twelve to thirteen." This was three centuries ago,
but Spain changes slowly. The girl of to-day, nevertheless, marries
later than her mother married. I remember one weary woman of forty
with eighteen children in their graves and the three who were living
physical and mental weaklings. She told us of a friend who married at
fourteen and used to leave her household affairs in confusion while
she stole away to a corner to play with her dolls. Her husband, a
grave lawyer in middle life, would come home to dinner and find his
helpmeet romping with the other children in the _plaza_.
The Spanish girl is every whit as fascinating as her musical, cloaked
gallant confides to her iron-grated lattice. Indeed, these amorous
serenades hardly do her justice, blending as she does French animation
with Italian fervor. In Andalusia she dances with a grace that makes
every other use of life seem vain. And when she bargains, there is
nothing sordid about it. Her haggling is a social condescension that
at once puts the black-eyed young salesman at her mercy.
"But the fan seems to me the least bit dear, senor."
He shrugs his shoulders and flings out his arm in protest.
"Ah, senorita! You see not how beautiful the work is. I am giving it
away at six _pesetas_."
She lifts her eyebrows half incredulously, all bewitchingly.
"At five _pesetas_, senor."
He runs his hand through his black hair in chivalrous distress.
"But the peerless work, senorita! And this other, too! I sacrifice it
at four _pesetas_."
She touches both fans lightly.
"You will let us have the two at seven _pesetas_, senor?"
Her eyes dance over his confusion. He catches the gleam, laughs back,
throws up his hands.
"_Bueno_, senorita. At what you please."
It takes a Spaniard to depict a throng of Spanish ladies,--"fiery
carnations or starry jasmine in their hair, cheeks like blush roses,
eyes black or blue, with lashes quivering like butterflies; cherry
lips, a glance as fickle as the light nod of a flower in the wind, and
smiles that reveal teeth like pearls; the all-pervading fan with its
wordless telegraphy in a thousand colors." In such a throng one sees
not only the typical "eyes of midnight," but those "emerald eyes"
which Cervantes knew, and veritable pansy-colored eyes dancing with
more than pansy mischief. But the voices! In curious contrast to the
tones of Spanish men, soft, coaxing, caressing, the voices of the
women are too often high and harsh, suggesting, in moments of
excitement, the scream of the Andalusian parrot. "O Jesus, what a
fetching hat! The feather, the feather, see, see, see, _see_ the
feather! Mary Most Pure, but it must have cost four or five _pesetas_!
Ah, my God, don't I wish it were mine!" The speaker who gets the lead
in a chattering knot of Spanish women is a prodigy not only of
volubility, but of general muscular action. She keeps time to her
shrill music with hands, fan, elbows, shoulders, eyebrows, knees. She
dashes her sentences with inarticulate whirs and whistles, and
countless pious interjections: _Gracias a Dios! Santa Maria! O Dios
mio!_ The others, out-screamed and out-gesticulated, clutch at her,
shriek at her, fly at her, and still, by some mysterious genius,
maintain courtesy, grace, and dignity through it all. Yet it is true
that the vulgar-rich variety is especially obnoxious among Spaniards.
An overdressed Spanish woman is frightfully overdressed, her voice is
maddening, her gusts of mirth and anger are painfully uncontrolled.
This, however, is the exception, and refinement the rule.
The legendary Spanish lady is forever sitting at a barred window, or
leaning from a balcony, coquetting with a fan and dropping arch
responses to the "caramel phrases" of her guitar-tinkling cavalier.
"You're always saying you'd die for me.
I doubt it nevertheless;
But prove it true by dying,
And then I'll answer yes."
For, loving as they are, Spanish sweethearts take naturally to
teasing. "When he calls me his Butterfly, I call him my Elephant. Then
his eyes are like black fire, for he is ashamed to be so big, but in a
twinkling I can make him smile again." The scorn of these dainty
creatures for the graces of the ruling sex is not altogether affected.
I shall not forget the expression with which a Sevillian belle, an
exquisite dancer, watched her _novio_ as, red and perspiring, he flung
his stout legs valiantly through the mazes of the _jota_. "Men are
uglier than ever when they are dancing, aren't they?" she remarked to
me with all the serenity in the world. And a bewitching maiden in
Madrid, as I passed some favorable comment upon the photographs of her
two brothers, gave a deprecatory shrug. "Handsome? _Ca!_" (Which is
_no_ many times intensified.) "But they are not so ugly, either,--_for
men_."
The style of compliment addressed by _caballeros_ to senoritas is not
like "the quality of mercy," but very much strained indeed. "Your eyes
are two runaway stars, that would rather shine in your face than in
heaven, but your heart is harder than the columns of Solomon's temple.
Your father was a confectioner and rubbed your lips with honey-cakes."
Little Consuelo, or Lagrimas, or Milagros, or Dolores, or Peligros
laughs it off, "Ah, now you are throwing flowers."
The _coplas_ of the wooer below the balcony are usually sentimental.
"By night I go to the patio,
And my tears in the fountain fall,
To think that I love you so much,
And you love me not at all."
"Sweetheart, little Sweetheart!
Love, my Love!
I can't see thy eyes
For the lashes above.
Eyes black as midnight,
Lashes black as grief!
O, my heart is thirsty
As a summer leaf."
"If I could but be buried
In the dimple of your chin,
I would wish, Dear, that dying
Might at once begin."
"If thou wilt be a white dove,
I will be a blue.
We'll put our bills together
And coo, coo, coo."
Sometimes the sentiment is relieved by a realistic touch.
"Very anxious is the flea,
Caught between finger and thumb.
More anxious I, on watch for thee,
Lest thou shouldst not come."
And occasionally the lover, flouted overmuch, retorts in kind.
"Don't blame me that eyes are wet,
For I only pay my debt.
I've taught you to cry and fret,
But first you taught me to forget."
"I'll not have you, Little Torment,
I don't want you, Little Witch.
Let your mother light four candles
And stand you in a niche."
The average Spaniard is well satisfied with his senora as she is. He
did her extravagant homage as a suitor, he treats her with kindly
indulgence as a husband, but he expects of her a life utterly bounded
by the _casa_. "What is a woman?" we heard one say. "A bottle of
wine." And those few words tell the story why, with all their charm,
home-love, and piety, the Spanish women have not availed to keep the
social life of the Peninsula sound and sweet.
"But to admire them as our gallants do,
'Oh, what an eye she hath! Oh, dainty hand!
Rare foot and leg!' and leave the mind respectless,
This is a plague that in both men and women
Makes such pollution of our earthly being."
The life of the convent is attractive to girls of mystic temperament,
like the _Maria_ of Valdes, but many of these lively daughters of the
sun regard it with frank disfavor. One of the songs found in the
mouths of little girls all over the Peninsula is amusingly expressive
of the childish aversion to so dull a destiny.
"I wanted to be married
To a sprightly barber-lad,
But my parents wished to put me
In the convent dim and sad.
"One afternoon of summer
They walked me out in state,
And as we turned a corner,
I saw the convent gate.
"Out poured all the solemn nuns
In black from toe to chin,
Each with a lighted candle,
And made me enter in.
"The file was like a funeral;
The door shut out the day;
They sat me on a marble stool
And cut my hair away.
"The pendants from my ears they took,
And the ring I loved to wear,
But the hardest loss of all to brook
Was my mat of raven hair.
"If I run out to the garden
And pluck the roses red,
I have to kneel in church until
Twice twenty prayers are said.
"If I steal up to the tower
And clang the convent bell,
The holy Abbess utters words
I do not choose to tell.
"My parents, O my parents,
Unkindly have you done,
For I was never meant to be
A dismal little nun."
I came but slightly in contact with Spanish nuns. Among the figures
that stand out clear in memory are a kindly old sister, at Seville, in
the _Hospital de la Caridad_, who paused midway in her exhibition of
the famous Murillos there to wipe her eyes and grieve that we were
Protestants, and an austere, beautiful woman in _La Cuna_, or
Foundling Asylum of Seville, who caressed a crying baby with the
passionate tenderness of motherhood denied. The merriest Spanish
_hermana_ of our acquaintance we encountered on the French side of the
Pyrenees. At Anglet, halfway between Biarritz and Bayonne, is the
Convent of the Bernardines, Silent Sisters. The visitor sees them only
from a distance, robed in white flannel, with large white crosses
gleaming on the back of their hooded capes. These, too, were
originally white, and the hoods so deep that not even the profile of
the features could be seen; but the French Government, disturbed by
the excessive death-rate in this order, recently had the audacity to
interfere and give summary orders that the hoods be cut away, so that
the healthful sunshine might visit those pale faces. The mandate was
obeyed, but, perhaps in sign of mournful protest, the new hoods and
capes are black as night. These women Trappists may recite their
prayers aloud, as they work in field or garden, or over their
embroidery frames, but they speak for human hearing only once a year,
when their closest family friends may visit them and listen through a
grating to what their disused voices may yet be able to utter. From
all other contact with the world they are shielded by an outpost guard
of a few of the Servants of Mary, an industrious, self-supporting
sisterhood, whose own convent, half a mile away, is a refuge for
unwedded mothers and a home for unfathered children. Hither the
pitying sisters brought, a few days before our visit, a wild-eyed girl
whom they had found lying on one of the sea rocks, waiting for the
rising tide to cover her and her shame together. The chief treasure of
this nunnery, one regrets to add, is the polished skull of Mary
Magdalene.
That one of the Servants of Mary who showed us over the Trappist
convent was a bright-eyed Spanish dame of many winters, as natural a
chatterbox as ever gossiped with the neighbors in the sun. Her glee in
this little opportunity for conversation was enough to wring the heart
of any lover of old ladies. She walked as slowly as possible and
detained us on every conceivable pretext, reaching up on her rheumatic
tiptoes to pluck us red and white camellias, and pointing out, with a
lingering garrulity, the hardness of the cots in the bare, cold little
cells, the narrowness of the benches in the austere chapel, and, in
the cheerless dining room, the floor of deep sand, in which the
Bernardines kneel throughout their Friday dinner of bread and water.
Longest of all, she kept us in the cemetery, all spick and span, with
close-set rows of nameless graves, each with a cross shaped upon it in
white seashells. The dear old soul, in her coarse blue gown, with tidy
white kerchief and neatly darned black hood and veil, showed us the
grave of her own sister, adding, proudly, that her four remaining
sisters were all cloistered in various convents of Spain.
"All six of us nuns," she said, "but my brother--no! He has the
dowries of us all and lives the life of the world. Just think! I have
two nephews in Toledo. I have never seen them. My sister's grave is
pretty, is it not? They let me put flowers there. Oh, there are many
families in Spain like ours, where all the daughters are put into
convents. Spain is a very religious country. The sons? Not so often.
Sometimes, when there is a conscription, many young men become priests
to escape military service but it is the women who are most devout in
Spain."
And after the rustic gate was shut on the sleeping-place of the
Bernardines, scarcely more silent and more dead beneath the sod than
above it, she still detained us with whispered hints of distinguished
Spanish ladies among those ghostly, far-off figures that, pitchfork or
pruning knife in hand, would fall instantly upon their knees at the
ringing of the frequent bell for prayers. Spanish ladies, too, had
given this French convent many of its most costly treasures. We said
good-by to our guide near an elaborate shrine of the Madonna, which a
bereaved Spanish mother had erected with the graven request that the
nuns pray for the soul of her beloved dead.
"Even we Servants of Mary are not allowed to talk much here," said in
parting this most sociable of saints, clinging to us with a
toil-roughened, brown old hand. "It is a holy life, but quiet--very
quiet. I have been here forty-four years this winter. My name is
Sister Solitude."
The nun whom I knew best was an exquisite little sister just back from
Manila. During several months I went to her, in a Paris convent, twice
or three times a week, for Spanish lessons. The reception room in
which I used to await her coming shone not as with soap and water, but
as with the very essence of purity. The whiteness of the long, fine
curtains had something celestial about it. The only book in sight, a
bundle of well-worn leaves bound in crimson plush and placed with
precision in the centre of the gleaming mahogany table, was a volume
of classic French sermons,--the first two being on Demons, and the
next on Penance. Further than this I never read; for very punctually
the slight figure, in violet skirt and bodice, with a white cross
embroidered upon the breast, swept softly down the hall. A heavy
purple cord and a large-beaded rosary depended from the waist. In
conversation she often raised her hand to press her ring, sign of her
sacred espousals, to her lips. Her type of face I often afterward saw
in Spain, but never again so perfect. Her complexion was the richest
southern brown, the eyes brightening in excitement to vivid, flashing
black. The eyebrows, luxuriant even to heaviness, were nevertheless
delicately outlined, and the straight line of the white band
emphasized their graceful arch. The nose was massive for a woman's
face, and there was a slight shading of hair upon the upper lip. The
mouth and chin, though so daintily moulded, were strong. Not the
meek, religious droop of the eyelids could mask the fire, vigor,
vitality, intensity, that lay stored like so much electricity behind
the tranquil convent look.
We would go for the lesson to a severe little chamber, whose only
ornament was a crucifix of olive wood fastened against the wall. Then
how those velvet eyes would glow and sparkle in the eagerness of
rushing speech! The little sister loved to tell of her Manila
experience, almost a welcome break, I fancied, in the monotonous peace
of cloister life. All that Sunday morning, when the battle was on, the
nuns maintained their customary services, hearing above their prayers
and chants and the solemn diapason of the organ, the boom, boom, boom
of our wicked American cannon. For, according to this naive historian,
Catholic Spain, best beloved of Our Lady among the nations of the
earth, had labored long in the Philippines to Christianize the
heathen, when suddenly, in the midst of those pious labors with which
she was too preoccupied to think of fitting out men-of-war and
drilling gunners, a pirate fleet bore down upon her and overthrew at
once the Spanish banner and the Holy Cross. Tears sparkled through
flame as the _hermanita_ told of her beautiful convent home, now half
demolished. The sisters did not abandon it until six weeks after the
battle, but as the nunnery stood outside the city walls, their
superior judged it no safe abode for Spanish ladies, and ordered them
away. The French consul arranged for their transport to Hongkong on a
dirty little vessel, where they had to stay on deck, the twenty-seven
of them, during their week's voyage, suffering from lack of proper
shelter and especially from thirst, the water supply running short the
second day out. But all this was joy of martyrdom.
"Is not Hongkong a very strange city?" I asked. "Did it seem to you
more like Manila than like Paris and Madrid?"
The little sister's voice was touched with prompt rebuke.
"You speak after the fashion of the world. All cities look alike to
us. Ours is the life of the convent. It matters nothing where the
convent stands."
Stimulated by reproof, I waxed impertinent. "Not even if it stands
within range of the guns? Now, truly, truly, were you not the least
bit frightened that morning of the battle?"
The sunny southern smile was a fleeting one, and left a reminiscent
shadow in the eyes.
"Frightened? Oh, no! There were no guns between us and Paradise. From
early dawn we heard the firing, and hour after hour we knelt before
the altar and prayed to the Mother of God to comfort the souls of the
brave men who were dying for _la patria_; but we were not frightened."
There were strange jostlings of ideas in that cloistered cell,
especially when the dusk had stolen in between our bending faces and
the Spanish page.
Once we talked of suicide. That morning it had been a wealthy young
Parisian who had paid its daily tribute to the Seine.
"What a horror!" gasped the little sister, clasping her slender hands
against her breast. "It is a mortal sin. And how foolish! For if life
is hard to bear, surely perdition is harder."
"It does not seem to me so strange in case of the poor," I responded,
waiving theology. "But a rich man, though his own happiness fails,
has still the power of making others happy."
"Ah, but I understand!" cried Little Manila, her eyes like stars in
the dimness. "The devil does not see truth as the blessed spirits do,
but sees falsehoods even as the world. And so in his blindness he
believes the soul of a rich man more precious than the souls of the
poor, and tempts the rich man more than others. Yet when the devil has
that soul, will he find it made of gold?"
[Illustration: MADRID ROYAL PALACE]
One chilly November afternoon, gray with a fog that had utterly
swallowed the Eiffel Tower above its first huge uprights, which
straddled disconsolately like legs forsaken of their giant, she
explained in a sudden rush of words why Spain had been worsted in the
war with America.
"Whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth. As with persons, so with
nations. Those that are not of His fold He gives over to their fill of
vainglory and greed and power, but the Catholic nations He cleanses
again and again in the bitter waters of defeat--ah, in fire and blood!
Yet the end is not yet. The rod of His correction is upon Spain at
this hour, and the Faithful are glad in the very heart of sorrow, for
even so shall her sins be purged away, even so shall her coldness be
quickened, even so shall she be made ready for her everlasting
recompense."
"And the poor Protestant nations?" I asked, between a smile and a
sigh.
The little sister smiled back, but the Catholic eyes, for all their
courtly graciousness, were implacable.
She was of a titled family and had passed a petted childhood in
Madrid. There she had been taken, on her seventh birthday, to a
_corrida de toros_, but remembered it unpleasantly, not because of the
torture inflicted on the horses and bulls, but because she had been
frightened by the great beasts, with their tossing horns and furious
bellowing. Horns always made her think of the devil, she said. From
her babyhood she had been afraid of horns.
One day a mischievous impulse led me to inquire, in connection with a
chat about the Escorial, "And how do you like Philip II?"
The black eyes shot one ray of sympathetic merriment, but the Spaniard
and the nun were on their guard.
"He was a very good Catholic," she replied demurely.
"So was _Isabel la Catolica_," I responded. "But don't you think she
may have been a trifle more agreeable?"
"Perhaps she was a little more _simpatica_," admitted the _hermanita_,
but that was her utmost concession. She would not even allow that
Philip had a sorry end.
"If his body groaned, his soul was communing with the Blessed Saints
and paid no heed."
At the corner of the street which led under the great garden wall to
the heavily barred gate of the convent was a flower-stand. The shrewd,
swift-tongued Madame in charge well knew the look of the unwary, and
usually succeeded in selling me a cluster of drooping blossoms at
twice the value of the fresh, throwing in an extra leaf or stem at the
close of the bargain with an air of prodigal benevolence. The handful
of flowers would be smilingly accepted by the little sister, but
instantly laid aside nor favored with glance or touch until the close
of the visit, when they would be lifted again with a winsome word of
acknowledgment and carried away, probably to spend their sweetness at
the marble feet of the Virgin. In vain I tried to coax from this
scorner of God's earth some sign of pleasure in the flowers
themselves.
"Don't you care for tea-roses?" "_Ah, el mundo pasa._ But their color
is exquisite."
Yet her eyes did not turn to the poor posy for the two hours
following.
"This mignonette has only the grace of sweetness."
"It is a delicate scent, but it will not last. _El mundo pasa._"
She held the sprays at arm's length for a moment, and then laid them
down on a mantel at the farther end of the room.
"I am sorry these violets are not fresher."
"But no! The touch of Time has not yet found them. Still, it is only a
question of to-morrow. _El mundo pasa._"
"Yes, the world passes. But is it not good while it lasts?"
"The world good! No, no, and a thousand times no. Behold it now at the
end of the nineteenth century,--wars and sorrows and bitter
discontents, evil deeds and evil passions everywhere. Do you see the
peace of Christ in the faces on the Paris streets? The blossoms of
this earth, the pleasures of this world, the affections of this life,
all have the taste of death. But here in God's own garden we live even
now His everlasting life."
"You are always glad of your choice? You never miss the friends of
your childhood?"
"Glad, glad, glad. Glad of my choice. Glad to see no more the faces of
father and mother. And for them, too, it is great joy. For Catholic
parents it is supreme delight to give up their children to the Holy
Church. The ways of the world are full of slippery places, but when
they leave us here, they know that our feet are set on the very
threshold of heaven."
Sometimes the slight form shivered in the violet habit, and the dark
foreign face looked out with touching weariness from its frame of soft
white folds.
"You are cold? You are tired? Will you take my cloak? Were the
children troublesome to-day?"
It was always the same answer: "_No importa. No importa._ It matters
not. Our life is not the life of flesh and blood."
And indeed, as I saw her in the Christmas service among the other
Spanish sisters, those lovely figures in white and violet making
obeisance before the altar until their veiled foreheads almost touched
the pavement, bowing and rising again with the music like a field of
lilies swaying in the breeze, I felt that she was already a being of
another world, before she had known this. Over her had been chanted
the prayers for the dead. The strange ceremony of taking the veil had
been her burial rite. The convent seemed a ghost land between earth
and heaven.
My _hermanita_ belonged to one of the teaching orders, and despite the
strange blanks in her knowledge, for secular lore had been, so far as
possible, excluded from her education, she was representative of the
finer and more intelligent class of Spanish nuns. In Granada I heard
of the nuns chiefly as the makers of those delicious _dulces_, sugared
fruits, which were indispensable to a child's saint-day, and there I
was taught the scoffing epitaph:--
"Here lies Sister Claribel,
Who made sweetmeats very well,
And passed her life in pious follies,
Such as dressing waxen dollies."
[Illustration: THE ROYAL FAMILY]
To the spinster outside the nunnery Spain has little to offer. Small
heed is paid to her except by St. Elias, who, on one day of Holy Week,
walks about all Seville with a pen in his hand, peering up at the
balconies and making note of the old maids. Since Andalusia expresses
the theory of counterparts by saying, "Every one has somewhere in the
world his half orange," the spinster can hardly hope for a
well-rounded life. Careers are not open to her. There are "advanced
women" in Spain, the most eminent being Emelia Pardo Bazan, novelist,
lecturer, editor, who advocates for women equal educational and
political privileges with men, but who has not yet succeeded in
opening the doors. The voice of Spanish women, nevertheless, is
sometimes heard by Spanish statesmen, as when delegation after
delegation of senoras who had relatives held as prisoners by the
Filipinos invaded the senate-house with petitions until they could no
longer be ignored.
A more thorough and liberal education for Spanish women is the
pressing need to-day. There is, of course, great lack of primary
schooling. A girl in her late teens, wearing the prettiest of
embroidered aprons and with the reddest of roses in her hair, once
appealed to me in Toledo for help. She had been sent from a
confectioner's to deliver a tray of wheaten rolls at a given address,
and she could read neither the names of streets nor the numbers of
houses. But the higher education will carry the lower with it. Spain
is degenerate in this regard. The Moors used to have at Cordova an
academy for girls, where science, mathematics, and history were
taught. Schools for Spanish girls at present impart little more than
reading and writing, needle-work, the catechism, the four rules of
arithmetic, and some slight notion of geography. French and music,
recognized accomplishments, are learned by daughters of the privileged
class from their governesses or in the convents. Missionary work in
Spain has largely concerned itself with the educational question, and
Mrs. Gulick's project for the establishment of a woman's college in
Madrid, a college without distinction of creed, is the fruit of long
experience. Little by little she has proven the intellectual ability
of Spanish girls. She established the International Institute at San
Sebastian, secured State examination for her _ninas_ and State
recognition of their eminent success, and even won for a few of them
admission to the University of Madrid, where they maintained the
highest rank throughout the course. All that Spanish girls need is
opportunity.
But if the senoritas are so charming now, with their roses and their
graces and their fans, why not leave them as they are, a page of
mediaeval poetry in this strenuous modern world? If only they were
dolls outright and did not suffer so! When life goes hard with these
high-spirited, incapable creatures, it goes terribly hard. I can see
yet the tears scorch in the proud eyes of three undowered sisters,
slaving at their one art of embroidery from early till late for the
miserable pittance that it brought them. "We shall rest when we are
dead," said the youngest. The absolute lack of future for these brave,
sensitive girls, well-born, well-bred, naturally as keen as the
keenest, but more ignorant, in matters of common education, than the
children of our lowest grammar grade, is heart-breaking. If such girls
were stupid, shallow, coarse, it would be easier; but the Spanish type
is finely strung. Once I saw an impulsive beauty fly into that gust of
angry passion which Spaniards term the _rabia espanola_. A clumsy,
well-intentioned young Austrian had said a teasing word, and in the
fraction of a second the girl, overwrought with secret toils and
anxieties, was in a tempest of tears; but the wrath that blazed across
them burned the offender crimson. The poor fellow sent for his case of
choice Asturian cider, cooling in the balcony, read the evening news
aloud and discoursed on the value of self-control, but not even these
tactful attentions could undo, for that evening at least, the work of
his blundering jest. The girl flashed away to her chamber, her
handkerchief bitten through and through, and the quick fierce sound of
her sobs came to me across the hall deep into the night.
Wandering over Spain I found everywhere these winning, vivid, helpless
girls, versed in needlework and social graces, but knowing next to
nothing of history, literature, science, all that pertains to
intellectual culture. Some were hungry to learn. More did not dream of
the world of thought as a possible world for them. Among these it was
delightful to meet, scattered like precious seed throughout the
Peninsula, the graduates of the International Institute. So far as a
stranger could see, education had enhanced in them the Spanish
radiance and charm, while arming these with wisdom, power, and
resource.