Part 6 (1/2)

The day broke, and we pounded along through a dusty arid country. There was green in the bottom of the valley, but from the roads rose high columns of dust, while the plastered villages of box-like houses near the railroad were dried up and dust-coated. Dust blew in through the carriage windows and settled thick upon the curls which, still swinging and bobbing from the netting of the rack, were fast leaving their mistress behind. At first her companions had been anxious; now they were laughing.

”But,” they said, ”we wonder if she knows where to come for her things when she does arrive?”

The train became more crowded. Soon people were running up and down, looking angrily for places. Third-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers began to fill the corridor of our second-cla.s.s carriage. A boy of about nineteen, with the half-angry intense face characteristic of some Latins, came into the carriage and demanded a seat from the dark girl who was still stretched at full length. This seat ”Darkey,” with her habitual selfishness, refused to give up. Suddenly, we were in the middle of a full-fledged Spanish row.

To us it had a comic side. It was not what we would have called a row, as much as a furious debate. Of course with our slight acquaintance with Spanish we missed the finer points of the varied arguments.

”Darkey” began by saying that she was keeping the seat for a friend who was somewhere else. This was to some extent true; the French girl was somewhere else, though there was little likelihood of her claiming the seat.

The boy retorted that if she was somewhere else she probably had another seat.

This argument went to and fro, increasing in acerbity. Each of the quarrellers listened in silence to what the other had to say, making no attempt to interrupt, though the voices grew hoa.r.s.e with anger.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Presently ”Darkey” was telling the boy that he was a wretched third-cla.s.s pa.s.senger anyhow, and that he had no right in a second-cla.s.s carriage, and even if the seat were free he wasn't going to have it.

The boy retorted by saying that anybody could see what she was, and that her mother was probably sorry that she had ever been born, etc., etc.

No English quarrel could have gone to half the length that this proceeded. We were waiting to see either the boy jump into the carriage and shake the life out of ”Darkey,” or to see ”Darkey” spring, like the young tiger-cat she was, at the boy and scratch his face. But nothing happened. The crowded corridor listened with delight to the progress of the quarrel.

The train stopped at a station. ”Darkey” had sat up to pulverize the impertinent youth with some evil retort. The carriage door on the opposite side opened, and a placid, middle-aged peasant woman, followed by an ancient peasant man, stepped into the carriage, and before ”Darkey” had well discovered what was happening had squashed down in the disputed seat, left vacant by the removal of ”Darkey's” feet. The woman grinned at us all and sat nursing a large basket on her lap.

Then the quarrel slowly died down. After a while the boy went away.

However, he came back again whenever he had thought of something good, and barked it round the corner of the door at ”Darkey,” who, usually taken by surprise, could find nothing to retort before he had lost himself again in the crowd.

The peasant woman smiled at us all, and, opening her basket, handed to each of us a large peach. She selected one especially big for ”Darkey,”

presumably as refreshment after the tiring argument.

The day became hotter and hotter. The dust gathered more thickly on to the French girl's poor little curls. When the train stopped, children ran up and down beside the carriages, selling water at the price of ”one little b.i.t.c.h” the gla.s.s. We were now in the province of Murcia, and the scenery put on the characteristic appearance of that province, tall bare hills of an ochreous mauve, sloping down into a flat, irrigated, fertile valley. The division between mountain and valley, between the ”desert and the strown” was as sharp as though drawn with the full brush of a j.a.panese. On the mountains were dead remnants of Saracen castles, of dismantled Spanish robber fortresses, and the white or coloured buildings of monasteries which still lived sparkling in the sun.

CHAPTER VIII

MURCIA--FIRST IMPRESSIONS

One has a right to expect that the station which is the finish of a long and tiring journey should be both a terminus and have a quality all of its own. Our egoism makes it seem at that moment the most important place in the world. But Murcia (p.r.o.nounced locally Mouthia) had only a big ugly barn of a station like many through which we had already pa.s.sed, and even lacked a Precia Fijo jewellery shop. All we could see of the town, on emerging, was a few houses and a line of small trees which appeared as though they had been in a blizzard of whole-meal flour, so thick was the dust. Over this buff landscape quivered the blue sky.

In front of us were one or two cranky omnibuses and many green-hooded two-wheeled carts. These carts were Oriental in appearance and had the most distinctive appearance we had yet noted in Spain. They were gaily painted, and the hoods bulged with the generous curves of a Russian cupola. Inside they were lined with soiled red velvet, and the driver sat outside of this magnificence on a seat hanging over one of the tall wheels. Into one of these we were squeezed in company with two grinning travellers, and started off, soon plunging into the shadow of an avenue of lime trees, behind the grey trunks of which cowered insignificant little houses painted in colours which once had been bright.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CARTERS IN THE POSADA]

The more communicative of our fellow travellers said it was indeed the hottest day of the year. It was hot, but we were not oppressed by it, and found out in time that the Spaniard always seemed to suffer from the heat more than we did. Our endeavours to be agreeable in imperfect Spanish worked up the traveller to a discussion on languages, and to a eulogy on ourselves for taking the trouble to learn. We said that we were artists. He answered:

”Ah, yes, that explains it. Poor people, of course, are forced to learn languages.”

We drove across a stone bridge, almost in collision with a bright blue tram-car. A momentary glimpse was given to us of a muddy river running between deep embankments; and we drew up before a square barrack of red brick pierced by a regiment of balconied windows. The proprietor, oily like a cheerful slug, waved his fingers close to us, and drew back his hand in delicate jerks as though we were rare and brittle china. He preceded us into an Alhambra-like central hall, led us carefully up a stone staircase to a wide balcony, opened a door into a palatial bedroom with a flourish; and demanded fifteen pesetas ”sin extraordinario.”

Intuition told us that this was not a case of ”Precio Fijo,” and we reduced him gently to eleven pesetas before we accepted the bargain.