SHADOWS OF THE PHILIPS
A day or two later I was installed for a fortnight in a casa de
huespedes in the calle San Bernardo. In such places as one plans to
remain for any length of time there are few cheaper arrangements for
ample fare in all Europe than these Spanish "houses of guests." My
room, which was temporarily on the second-floor front, but solemnly
pledged to be soon changed to the third-floor back, was all that an
unpampered wanderer could have required. Breakfast was light; a cup of
chocolate and a roll--no self-respecting traveler ventures to sample
Spanish coffee more than once. But one soon grows accustomed and indeed
to prefer the European abstemiousness at the first meal. In
compensation the _almuerzo_ and _comida_, at twelve and seven, were more
than abundant. A thick soup, not unseldom redolent of garlic, was
followed by a salad, and that by a _puchero_, which is to say an entire
meal on one platter,--in the center a square of boiled beef flanked like
St. Peter's amid the hills of Rome by seven varieties of vegetables, the
_garbanzos_--bright yellow chickpeas of the size of marbles--with the
usual disproportion granted that robust comestible in Spain,
overtowering not only every other eminence but carpeting the intervening
valleys. That despatched, or seriously disfigured, there came a second
offering from the animal world,--a _cocido_ or an _olla podrida_, after
which the repast descended gradually by fruit, cheese, and cigarettes to
its termination. Through it all a common wine flowed generously.
Even on Friday this sturdy good cheer knew no abatement. Centuries ago,
in the raging days of the Moor, the faithful of Spain were granted for
their Catholic zeal and bodily behoof this dispensation, that they might
nourish their lean frames on whatever it should please Santiago, their
patron, to bring within bowshot of their home-made crosspieces. The Moor
has long since removed his dusky shadow from the land, but the
dispensation remains. Indeed, there is left scarcely a custom the
inobservance of which betrays the non-Catholic; or if one there be at
all general it is this: when he yawns--which he is not unwont to do even
at table--the devout Spaniard makes over his mouth the sign of the
cross, to keep the devil from gaining a foothold therein--an exorcism
that is not always successful.
There is yet another custom, quite the opposite of religious in result
at least, which the guest at a casa de huespedes must school himself to
endure. It grows out of the Spaniard's infernal politeness. Figure to
yourself that you have just returned from a morning of tramping through
sweltering Madrid on the ephemeral breakfast already noted, and sit down
at table just as a steaming puchero is served. With a melodious and
self-sacrificing "Serve yourself, senor," the addle-pated Spaniard
across the way pushes the dish to his neighbor; to which the neighbor
responds by pushing it back again with a "No! Serve _yourself_, senor,"
followed in quick succession by "No! No! Serve yourself, senor;" "No!
No! No! senor! Serve yourself!" "No! No! No! No! serve--" and so on
to the end of time, or until a wrathy Anglo-Saxon, rising in his place,
picks up the source of dispute and establishes order.
Our household in the calle San Bernardo consisted of a lawyer, a "man of
affairs"--using the latter word in its widest signification--of two
young Germans, "Don Hermann" and "Don Ricardo," for some time employed
in the city, and of the family itself. Of this the husband, a
slouching, toothless fellow of fifty, and the grandmother were mere
supernumeraries. The speaking parts were taken by the wife and
daughter, the former an enormous, unpolished woman with a well-developed
mustache and the over-developed voice of a stevedore. Indeed, a
stentorian, grating voice and a habit of speaking always at the tiptop
of it is one of the chief afflictions of the Spanish women of the
masses--and of their hearers. Is it by chance due to the custom of
studying and reciting always aloud and in chorus during their few years
of schooling? Quien sabe? There was presented during my stay in Madrid
the play, or more properly playlet--zarzuela--"Levantar Mueros--Raising
the Dead"; but I dared not go lest it turn out to be a dramatized sewing
circle.
But it remains to introduce the star member of the cast, the center of
that San Bernardo universe around which revolved mother,
supernumeraries, and guests like planets in their orbits--the daughter.
I fully expect to wander many a weary mile before I again behold so
beautiful a maid--or one that I should take more pleasure in being a
long way distant from. She was sixteen--which in Spain is past
childhood--a glorious, faultless blonde in a land where blondes are at
high premium, her lips forming what the Spaniard calls a "nido de
besos"--a nest of osculatory delights--and-- But why drive the
impossible task further? Such radiant perfections in human form must be
seen at least to be appreciated. It is sufficient, perhaps, to mention
that her likeness was on sale in every novelty shop in Madrid and found
more purchasers than that of Machaquito, King of the Toreros. In short,
a supreme beauty--had she been captured early and suitably polished
instead of remaining at home with mother until she had acquired mother's
voice, and mother's roughshod manners, and a slothful habit of life that
was destined, alas, in all probability to end by reproducing her
mother's bulk and mustache.
There are two things worth seeing in howling, meeowling, brawling,
blistering Madrid--her outdoor life and the Prado museum. It was the
latter that I viewed by day, for when relentless August has settled down
the capital is not merely hot, it is plutonic, cowering under a dead,
sultry heat without the relief of a breath of air, a heat that weighs
down like a leaden blanket and makes Seville seem by comparison a
northern seaport. A saying as old as its foolish founder's grave
credits the city with three month's invierno and nine months' infierno,
a characterization that loses much in symmetry, though gaining, perhaps,
in force by translation. It was my fortune to have happened into the
place when the lowest circle of the latter region was having its inning.
Wherefore I went often to the Prado; and came as often away more
physically fatigued than after a four-hour watch in a stokehole, and
with my head in a bewildered whirl that even a long stroll in the Buen
Retiro only partly reduced. It is like the irrationality of man to
bring together these thousands of masterpieces, so close together that
not one of them can produce a tenth of its proper effect. Of the
pictures in the Prado the seeing alone would require two years of
continuous work, the attempt to describe, a lifetime; pictures running
through all the gamut of art from the fading of the pre-Raphaelites down
to Goya, that plain-spoken Goya who seems to have stood afar off and
thrown paint by the bucketful at his canvas--with marvelous results. A
pandemonium of paintings, not one of which but off by itself would bring
daily inspiration to all beholders. It is the tendency of all things to
crowd together--wealth, art, learning, work, leisure, poverty; man's
duty to combat this tendency by working for a sane and equitable
distribution. The Prado collection would be a treasure, indeed, had
those who exerted themselves to bring these paintings together given
half that exertion to spreading them out. Then it might be that in a
land as rich with art as Spain one would not find daubs and
beer-calendars hung in the place of honor in the homes and fondas of
"the masses." When the good day comes that the accumulation of the
Prado is dispersed I shall bespeak as my share the "Borrachos" or
"Vulcan's Forge" of sturdy Velazquez.
[Illustration: La Puerta del Sol, Madrid: the Spaniard']
center of the universe]
Those who are curious may also visit, at seasons and with permissions,
the unpleasing royal palace, about the outer walls of which sleep scores
of fly-proof vagrants in the shade of half leafless trees, and sundry
other government buildings, all of which--except the vagrants--are duly
and fully described in the guide-books. There is, too, the daily _juego
de Pelota_, imported from the Basque provinces, a sort of enlarged
handball played in a slate-walled chamber in which the screaming of
gamblers for bids and their insults to the players know no cessation.
Wandering aimlessly through her streets, as the sojourner in Madrid must
who cannot daily sleep the day through, I found myself often pausing to
admire the splendid displays in the windows of her tailors. Spain has
no wool schedule, and as I gazed a deep regret came over me that I could
not always be a dweller in Madrid when my garb grows threadbare or a
tailor bill falls due. But there was sure remedy for such melancholy.
When it grew acute I had but to turn and note the fitting of these
splendid fabrics on the passer-by, and the sadness changed to a wonder
that the madrileno tailor has the audacity to charge at all for his
services.
[Illustration: An Alameda by day--chairs stacked until busy night-time]
So bare and uninviting are her environs--and she has no suburbs--that
Madrid never retires outwardly as other cities for her picnics and
holidays, but crowds more closely together in the Buen Retiro. The
congestion is greatest about the Estanque Grande. The largest body of
water the normal madrileno ever sees is this artificial pond of about
the area--though not the depth--of a college swimming-pool. On it are
marooned a few venerable rowboats, for a ride in which most of the
residents of Madrid have been politely quarreling every fair day since
they reached a quarrelsome age. Small wonder dwellers in the capital
cry out in horror at the idea of drinking water. One might as sanely
talk of burning wood for fuel.
Obviously no untraveled native of "las Cortes" has more than a vague
conception of the sea. Indeed, the ignorance on this point is nothing
short of pathetic, if one may judge from the popular sea novel that fell
into my hands during my stay. The writer evidently dwelt in the usual
hotbox that constitutes a Madrid lodging and had not the remotest,
wildest notion what thing a sea may be, nor the ability to tell a
mainsail from a missionary's mule. But he was a clever man--to have
concocted such a yarn and escaped persecution.
Madrid, however, like all urban Spain, comes thoroughly to life only
with the fall of night. Occasionally a special celebration carries her
populace to some strange corner of the city, but the fixed rendezvous is
the Paseo de Recoletos, a broader Alameda where reigns by day an
un-Spanish opulence of shade enjoyed only by the chairs stacked
house-high beneath the trees. There is nothing hurried about the
congregating. Dinner leisurely finished, the madrileno of high or low
degree begins to drift slowly thither. By nine the public benches are
taken; by ten one can and must move only with the throng at the accepted
pace, or pay a copper to sit in haughty state in one of the now
unstacked chairs. Toward ten-thirty a military band straggles in from
the four points of the compass, finishes its cigarette, languidly
unlimbers its instruments, and near eleven falls to work--or play.
About the same time there come wandering through the trees, as if drawn
here by merest chance, five threadbare blind men, each with a battered
violin or horn tucked tenderly under one arm. During the opening number
they listen attentively, in silence, after the manner of musicians. Then
as the official players pause to roll new cigarettes the sightless
ragamuffins take their stand near at hand and strike up a music that
more than one city of the western world could do worse than subsidize.
Thereafter melody is incessant; and with it the murmur of countless
voices, the scrape of leisurely feet on the gravel, the cries of the
hawkers of all that may by any chance be sought, and louder and more
insistent than all else the baying of newsboys--aged forty to sixty and
of both sexes--"_El Pais!_" "_El Heraldo!_" "_La
Cor-r-respondencia-a-a-a!_"
Midnight! Why, midnight is only late in the afternoon in Madrid. The
concert does not end until three and half the babies of the city are
playing in the sand along the Paseo de Recoletos when the musicians
leave. Besides, what else is to be done? Even did one feel the
slightest desire to turn in there is not the remotest possibility of
finding one's room less than a sweatbox. The populace shows little
inclination to disperse, and though many saunter unwillingly homeward
for form's sake, it is not to sleep, for one may still hear chatting and
the muffled twang of guitars behind the blinds of the open windows. As
for myself, I drifted commonly after the concert into the "Circo
Americano" or a zarzuela, though such entertainments demonstrated
nothing except how easily the madrileno is amused. Yet even these close
early--for Madrid; and rambling gradually into my adopted section, it
was usually my fortune to run across a "friend of the house"--of whom
more anon--to retire with him to the nearest _Juego de Billar_, or
billiard-hall, there to play the night gray-headed.
The doors of Madrid close at midnight, and neither the madrileno nor his
guests have yet reached that stage of civilization where they can be
entrusted with their own latch-key. But it is easy for all that to gain
admittance. One has only to halt before one's door, clap one's hands
soundly three or six or nine or fifteen times, bawl in one's most
musical and top-most voice, "Ser-r-r-r-reno!" not forgetting to roll the
r like the whir of a broken emery-wheel, and then sit calmly down on the
curb and wait. Within a half-hour, or an hour at most, the watchman is
almost sure to appear, rattling with gigantic keys, carrying staff and
lantern, and greeting the exile with all the compliments of the Spanish
season, unlocks, furnishes him a lighted wax taper, wishes him a "good
night" and a long day's sleep, and gracefully pockets his two-cent fee.
Theoretically the sereno is supposed to keep order--or at least orderly.
But nothing is more noted for its absence in Madrid by night than order.
The sereno of the calle San Bernardo showed great liking for the
immediate neighborhood of our casa de huespedes--after I had been
admitted. Rare the night--that is, morning--that he did not sit down
beneath my window--for my promotion to the third-floor back was
postponed until I left the city--with a pair of hackmen or day-hawks and
fall to rehearsing in a foghorn-voice the story of his noble past. Twice
or thrice I let drop a hint in the form of what water was in my pitcher.
But the serenos of Madrid are imperturbable, and water is precious. On
each such occasion the romancer moved over some two feet and serenely
continued his tale until the rising sun sent him strolling homeward.
"Don Ricardo," of our German boarders, aspired to change from his stool
in a banking-house to the bullring. He had taken a course in Madrid's
Escuela Taurina and was already testing his prowess each Sunday as a
banderillero in the little plaza of Tetuan, a few miles outside the
city. In consequence--for "Ricardo" was a companionable youth for all
his ragged Spanish--our casa de huespedes became a rendezvous of lesser
lights in the taurine world. Two or three toreros were sure to drop in
each evening before we had sipped the last of our wine, to spend an hour
or two in informal _tertulia_. I had not been a week in the city before
I numbered among my acquaintances Curdito, Capita de Carmona, Pepete,
and Moreno de Alcala, all men whose names have decorated many a ringside
poster.
There appeared one evening among the "friends of the house" a young man
of twenty, of singularly attractive appearance and personality.
Clear-eyed, of lithe yet muscular frame, and a spring-like quickness in
every movement, he was noticeable above all for his modest deportment,
having barely a touch of that arrogant self-esteem that is so frequently
the dominating characteristic of the Spaniard. His speech was the soft,
musical Andalusian; his conversation quickly demonstrated him a man of a
high rate of intelligence.
Such was Faustino Posadas, bullfighter, already a favorite among the
aficionados of Spain, though it is by no means often that a youth of
twenty finds himself vested with the red muleta. Son of the
spare-limbed old herder who has been keeper for many years of the
Tabladas, or bull pastures, of Seville, he had been familiar with the
animals and their ways from early childhood. At sixteen he was already
a banderillero. A famous espada carried him in his caudrilla to Peru
and an accident to a fellow torero gave him the opportunity to despatch
his first two bulls in the plaza of Lima. He returned to Spain a
full-fledged "novillero" and was rapidly advancing to the rank of
graduate espada, with the right to appear before bulls of any age.
Once introduced, Posadas appeared often in the calle San Bernardo; much
too often in fact to leave any suspicion that either his friendship for
"Don Ricardo" or the charms of our conversation was the chief cause of
his coming. A very few days passed before it had become a fixed and
accepted custom for him to set out toward nine for the Paseo with the
radiant daughter of the house--though mother waddled between, of course,
after the dictates of Spanish etiquette. Within a week he was received
by the family on the footing of a declared suitor; and of his favor with
the senorita there was no room for doubt.
There was always a long hour between the termination of supper and the
time when Madrid began its nightly promenade, during which it was
natural that our conversation should touch chiefly upon affairs of the
ring.
"Don Henrico," asked Capita one evening--for I was known to the company
as "Henrico Franco"--"is it true that there are no bullfights in your
country?"
"Vaya que gente!" burst out Moreno, when I had at length succeeded in
making clear to them our national objections to the sport. "What
rubbish! What does it matter if a few old hacks that would soon fall
dead of themselves are killed to make sport for the aficionados? As for
the bull-- Carajo, hombre! You yourself, if you were in such a rage as
the toro, would no more feel the thrust of a sword than the pricking of
a gadfly."
Posadas, on the other hand, readily grasped the American point of view.
He even admitted that he found the goring of the horses unpleasant and
that he would gladly see that feature of the corrida eliminated if there
were any other way of tiring the bull before the last act. But for the
bull himself he professed no sympathy whatever.
"What would you have us do?" he cried in conclusion. "Spain offers
nothing else for a son of the people without political pull than to
become torero. Without that we must work as peasants on black bread and
a peseta a day."
"As in any other trade," I inquired, "I suppose you enter the ring
without any thought of danger, any feeling of fear?"
"No, I don't remember ever being afraid," laughed the Sevillian, "though
when Miura furnishes the stock I like to hear mass before the corrida."
"What are the secrets of success?"
"I know only one," answered Posadas, "and that is no secret. Every move
the bull makes shows first in the whites of his eyes. Never for an
instant do I take my eyes off his. So it has been my luck not to be
once wounded," he concluded, making the sign of the cross.
"Cogidas!" cried Capita, passing a hand over a dull brown welt on his
neck. "Caramba! I have five of them, and every one by a cursed miura.
No, I never felt pain, only a cold chill that runs down to your very
toes. But afterward--in the hospital! Carajo!"
One would suppose that men engaged in so perilous a calling would take
extreme bodily care of themselves. Not a torero among them, however,
knew the meaning of "training" as the word is used by our athletes.
They drank, smoked--even during the corrida--ate what and when they
pleased, and more commonly spent the night strolling in the Paseo with
an "amiga" or carousing in a wineshop than sleeping. Whether it is a
leaving of the Moor or native to this blear, rocky land, there is much
of the fatalist in the Spaniard, especially the Andalusian. He is by
nature a gambler; be he torero, beggar, or senator, he is always ready
and willing to "take a chance."
"If a man is marked to be killed in the ring he will be killed there,"
asserted Pepete. "He cannot change his fate by robbing himself of the
pleasures of life."
Posadas was engaged to appear in the plaza of Madrid on the first Sunday
of our acquaintance. When I descended to the street at three the city
was already drifting ringward, a picador in full trim now and then
cantering by on his Rozinante--a sight fully as exciting to the populace
as the circus parade of our own land. I had reached the edge of the
Puerta del Sol when I heard a "Hola, amigo!" behind me and turning,
beheld none other than Jesus the Sevillian bearing down upon me with
outstretched hand. He had found work at his trade in the city--though
not yet a barber apparently.
"And Gasparo?" I asked.
"Perdido, senor! Lost again!" he sighed. "Perhaps he has found a new
amiga. But I much more fear he has fallen into the fingers of the
police. Mira V., senor. In all the journey we have not been able once
to hide ourselves on a freight train. At last, senor, in Castillejo,
Gasparo goes mad and swears he will ride once for nothing. With twenty
people looking on he climbs a wagon. A man shouts 'thief!' and around
the station comes running a guardia civil. I have not been able to find
Gasparo since. Senor, I have come to think it is not right to ride on
the railroad without a ticket. Gasparo, perhaps, is in prison. But we
will meet again when he comes out," he concluded cheerfully, as I turned
away.
At the plaza fully twelve thousand were gathered. The corrida was
distinguished particularly for its clumsiness, though the fighters,
while young, were not without reputation. Falls and bruises were
innumerable and the entire performance a chapter of accidents that kept
the aficionados in an uproar and gave no small amount of work to the
attendant surgeons. Of the three matadores, Serenito, a hulking fellow
whose place seemed last of all in the bullring, was gored across the
loins by his first bull and forced to abandon his task and fee to the
sobresaliente. Then Platerito--"Silver-plated"--a mere whisp of a man,
having dedicated to the populace as is the custom in Madrid the death of
the fifth bull, gasconaded up to the animal, fell immediately foul of a
horn, whirled about like a rag caught on a fly-wheel, and landed on his
shoulders fully sixty feet away. To the astonishment even of the
aficionados he sprang to his feet as jaunty as ever and duly despatched
the animal, though not over handily.
The misfortunes of his fellows served to bring out by contrast the skill
of Posadas. Not only did he pass the day unscathed, but killed both his
bulls at the first thrust so instantly that the thud of their fall might
be heard outside the plaza, how rare a feat only he knows who has
watched the hacking and butchering of many a "novillero." Indeed, so
pleasing was his work that he was at once engaged, contrary to all
precedent, to appear again on the ensuing Sunday.
By that time I had learned enough of the "fine points of the game" to
recognize that the Sevillian was approaching already true matador
"form," and as I took leave of him next day it was with the conviction
that success in his chosen career was as sure as the certainty of soon
winning his most cherished reward.
"Vaya, Don Henrico," he laughed as we shook hands. "We shall see each
other again. Some day when I go to Mexico or the Americas of the south
I shall come by New York and you shall show me all you have told us of."
There are few countries in which it is more difficult to lay out an
itinerary that will take in the principal points of interest without
often doubling on one's track than Spain. By dint of long calculation
and nice adjustment of details I sketched a labyrinthian route that my
kilometer-book, together with what walking I should have time for, would
cover. As for my check-book there was left exactly three pesetas a day
for the remainder of my time in the peninsula.
So one cloudy morning in early August I took train at the Estacion del
Norte and wound away upward through the gorges of the Guardarrama to
Segovia. Only there did I realize that the rumble of Madrid had been
absolutely incessant in my ears; the stillness of the ancient city was
almost oppressive, even more than in Toledo one felt peculiarly out of
the world and a sensation that he must not remain too long lest he be
wholly forgotten and lose his place in life's procession.
In the morning I set off by the highway that follows for some miles the
great unmortared aqueduct, that chief feature of Segovia, a thing indeed
far greater than the town, as if a man's gullet, or his thirst should be
larger than himself, so difficult is it for a city to obtain water in
this thirsty land. Where the road abandoned the monument it continued
across a country brown and sear, with almost the aspect of an American
meadow in autumn, steadily rising all but imperceptibly. Well on in the
morning I entered a forest, at a side road of which I was joined by two
guardias civiles, who marched for an hour with me exchanging information
and marveling that I had wandered so far afield. It has been my lot to
become well, nay, intimately acquainted with the police of many lands,
and I know of none that, as a body, are more nearly what police should
be than these civil guards of Spain, to whom is due the suppression of
all the old picturesque insecurities of the road. They have neither the
bully-ism of our own club-wielders nor the childishness of Asiatic
officers. Except in blistering Bailen the bearing of every pair I
met--they never travel singly--was such as to win at once the confidence
of the stranger and to draw out of him such facts as it is their duty to
learn so naturally that it seemed but a mutual exchange of politenesses.
There are, no doubt, petty corruptions in so large a body, but in the
presence of almost any of them one has a conviction that their first
thought is their duty.
The highway ended its climb at noon in La Granja--The Grange--residence
of the king in spring and autumn, a town little Spanish in aspect seated
in a carefully cropped forest at the base of a thickly wooded mountain.
I roamed unchallenged for half the afternoon through the royal park,
replete with fountains compared with which those of Versailles are mere
water-squirts; playthings that Philip the half-mad accused of costing
three million and amusing him three minutes. I was more fortunate, for
they cost me nothing and amused me fully half an hour.
After which I picked up the highway again and, winding around the regal
village, struck upward into the mountains of Guardarrama. At the hamlet
of Valsain I had just paused at the public spring when the third or
fourth tramp I had seen on the road in all Spain swung around a bend
ahead, marching doggedly northward. As I stooped to drink, a moan and a
thud sounded behind me. I turned quickly around to behold the roadster
writhing in the middle of the highway, the gravel of which had cut and
gashed one side of his face. The simple villagers, swarming wide-eyed
out of their houses, would have it at first that he was my companion and
I to blame for his mishap. He bore patent signs of months on the road,
being burned a tawny brown in garb and face by the sun that was
evidently the author of his misfortune. For a time the village stood
open-mouthed about him, the brawny housewives now and then giving vent
to their sympathy and helpless perplexity by a long-drawn "ay de mi!" I
suggested water, and a dozen women, dashing away with the agility of
middle-aged cows, brought it in such abundance that the victim was all
but drenched to the skin before I could drive them off. He revived a
bit and while a woman clumsily washed the blood and gravel from his
face, I addressed him in all the languages I could muster, for he was
evidently no Spaniard. The only response was a few inarticulate groans,
and when he had been carried to a grassy slope in the shade, I went on,
knowing him in kind if awkward hands.
A half-perpendicular hour passed by, and I seemed to have left Spain
behind. The road was toiling sharply upward through deep forests of
evergreen, cool as an Alpine valley, opening now and then to offer a
vista of thick treetops and a glimpse of red-tiled villages; a scene as
different from sterile, colorless, sunken-cheeked Castille as could well
be imagined. Nor did the dusk descend so swiftly in these upper
heights. The sun had set when I reached the summit at six thousand feet
and, passing through the Puerto de Navacerrada, started swiftly downward
in the thickening gloom; but it was some time before the night had
settled down in earnest.
I had marched well into it when I was suddenly startled by a sound of
muffled voices out of the darkness ahead. I moved forward noiselessly,
for this lonely pass has many a story to tell. A dim light shone
through what appeared to be a window. I shouted for admittance and a
moment later found myself in the hovel of a peon caminero.
Within, besides the family, were two educated Spaniards, one indeed who
had been a secretary in the American Legation up to the outbreak of the
recent war. When he had been apprised of my mode of travel and my goal,
he stared wonderingly at me for a moment and then stepped out with me
into the night. Marching a few paces down the highway until we had
rounded some obstruction, he pointed away into the void.
"Do you see those lights?" he asked.
Far away and to the right, so far and so high in the heavens that they
seemed constellations, twinkled three clusters of lights, almost in a
row but far separated one from another.
"The third and farthest," said my companion, "is El Escorial; and your
time is well-chosen, for to-morrow is the day of Saint Lawrence, her
patron saint."
We returned to the hut, where the wife of the peon was moved to cook me
a bowl of garbanzos and spread me a blanket on the stone floor. In the
morning the sharply descending highway carried me quickly down the
mountain, and by sunrise I was back once more in the familiar Castille.
It was verging on noon when, surmounting a sterile rise, I caught sight
of the dome and towers of the Escorial. A roadside stream, of which the
water was lukewarm, removed the grime of travel, and I climbed
sweltering into the village of Escorial de Arriba, pitched on a jagged
shoulder of the calcined mountain high above the monastery.
Spain is wont to show her originality and indifference to the
convenience of travelers, and on this, the anniversary of the grilling
of him in whose honor it was built, the great monastery was closed for
the only time during the year. I experienced no regret, however, for
the vast gloomy structure against its background of barren, rocky hills
had far too much the aspect of some dank prison to awaken any desire to
enter. Least impressive of famous buildings, the Escorial is certainly
the most oppressive. There is poetry, inspiration in many a building,
in the Taj Mahal, the Cathedral of Cologne; but not in the Escorial. It
suggests some frowning, bulky bourgeois of forty whose mother thinks him
and who would fain believe himself one of the most poetic and spiritual
of men.
I wandered away the day in the town, drifting in the afternoon down into
the village "de Abajo." There, in the multitude about the stone-pile of
a bullring, I ran across Curdito in festive garb. He was scheduled to
kill all three bulls of the day's corrida, but in spite of his urgent
invitation I felt in no mood to sit out the blistering afternoon on a
bare stone slab of this rough-and-tumble plaza.
El Escorial was so overrun with visitors to her annual celebration that
not a lodging of any sort was to be had in either the upper or the lower
village. The discovery brought me no shock, for a night out of doors I
neither dreaded nor regretted. But as I sauntered at dusk down past the
great building into the flanking "woods of Herrera," I could not but
wonder how those travelers who bewail the accommodations of the "only
possible hotel" would have met the situation.
Behind the monastery extends a broad, silent forest, not over thick, and
beneath the trees squat bushes and brown heather. I spread the day's
copy of the _Heraldo_ between two shrubs and, stretching out at my ease,
fell to munching the lunch I had bought in the village market. Let the
circumstances be right and I know few more genuine joys than to sleep
the night out of doors. Lie down in the open while a bit of daylight
still lingers, or awaken there when the dawn has come, and there is a
feeling of sordidness, mixed with the ludicrous, a sense of being an
outcast prone on the common earth. But while the night, obscuring all
details, hangs its canopy over the world there are few situations more
pleasing.
When I had listened a while to the panting of the August night I fell
asleep. For weeks past I had been viewing too many famous spots,
perhaps, had been delving too constantly into the story of Spain, My
constant use of Castilian, too, had borne fruit; English words no longer
intruded even on my inner meditations. Was it possible also that the
market lunch had been too heavy, or the nearness of the gloomy monastery
too oppressive? At any rate I fell to dreaming.
At first there passed a procession of all Spain,--arrieros, peasants,
Andalusian maidens, toreros, priests, Jesus the tramp, a chanting
water-seller, merchants and beggars; close followed by two guardias
civiles who looked at me intently as they passed. Then suddenly in
their place Moors of every garb and size were dancing about me. They
seemed to be celebrating a victory and to be preparing for some
Mohammedan sacrifice. A mullah advanced upon me, clutching a knife. I
started to my feet, a distant bell boomed heavily, and the throng
vanished like a puff of smoke.
Away off above, in a hollow in the gaunt mountain, I made out gradually
the form of a man sitting pensive, elbows on knees, gazing dark-browed
down upon me. He was in royal robes, and all at once he seemed to
start, to grow in size, and a line across his breast expanded to the
letters "Felipe II." Larger and larger he grew until he overtowered the
mountain itself; then slowly, scowlingly he rose and strode down upon
me. A women joined him, a scrawny woman who laid a hand inertly in his,
and I recognized Bloody Mary, who seemed thus in an instant to have
leaped over the seas from her island kingdom to join her gloomy husband.
In rapid succession new figures appeared,--Herrera first, a torpid,
lugubrious man strangely like the building he has left behind; then
quickly a multitude, through which strolled a man whose crown bore the
name "Pedro," running his sword with a chuckle of devilish laughter
through any that came within easy reach, young or old, asleep or awake.
Of a sudden there stalked forth from nowhere a lean, deep-eyed man of
fifty, a huge parchment volume under one arm, an almost cynical, yet
indulgent smile on his countenance; and as if to prove who he was there
raced down over the mountain a man not unlike him in appearance, astride
a caricature of a horse, and behind him a dumpy, wondering peasant
ambling on an ass. The cavalier sprang suddenly from his hack and fell
affectionately on the shoulder of the parchment-bearer, then bounding
back into the saddle he charged straight for Felipe, who, stepping to
one side, flung, backhanded, Mary his wife far out of sight over the
mountain.
A sound drew my attention to another side. Across the plain was marching
with stately tread a long file of Moors, each carrying in one hand his
head, by the hair.
"Los Abencerrajes!" I seemed to shout; and almost before it was uttered
there remained only Felipe and behind him a score of indistinct forms.
He waved a hand toward me and turned his back, and the company moved
down upon me unlimbering a hundred instruments of torture. Distant
bells were tolling mournfully. A priest advanced holding aloft a
crucifix and chanting in sepulchral voice:
"The hour of heretics sounds."
Louder and funereally rang the dismal bells; the torturers drew near; I
struggled to rise to my feet--and awoke.
The bells of the monastery were booming out over the night.