Part 14 (1/2)

It happened that the water of Verdolay was not very nice for drinking purposes, being full of minerals and salts, while that of La Luz was delicious. A poor woman, who did charing jobs for the farmer above-mentioned, was delighted to be allowed to carry us heavy cantaros full of La Luz water, a mile and a half, for the pay of fivepence a cantaro. One day after the sketch was finished she came in with a look of importance on her face.

”My Senora,” she said, ”is enamoured of the little painting which you have done of her house and farm. She wishes to buy the sketch.”

I had had some experience of Spanish prices, so I said:

”These paintings are made to exhibit in England. It is of no use to tell you the price, because English prices and Spanish prices are different.”

”But, Senora,” said the woman, ”my masters are very rich, excessively rich. They will pay any price that you like to ask.”

But I suspected her protestations. The sketch was one of the best I had done in Spain. I was not very eager to part with it. But owing to her entreaties, against my better judgment, fixing a low price because of Spain, I said at last:

”Two hundred pesetas.”[15]

Her mouth dropped open. For a moment she remained speechless with amazement. Then hastily crossing herself she gasped out:

”Madre Maria Sanctissima!”

Being a woman I was often asked to paint female portraits, but suspecting the monetary value which the people would put on paintings I refused. Jan overheard a red-faced, wealthy looking farmer discussing with his father on our doorstep the question of how much I was likely to ask for a portrait of the farmer's daughter.

_Red Face_: ”I think we might offer her ten pesetas.”[16]

_The Grandfather_: ”Well, she is foreign, she might demand fifteen.”

_Red Face_: ”Even if she wishes twenty we might yet consider it; or perhaps twenty-five; but then we would have to think it carefully over.”

Occasionally we would be asked into houses to examine pictures which the peasants believed to have value. In one house, a room was set aside as a small private chapel; it was full of painted plaster images covered with false jewels and tinsel; on the walls were oleograph reproductions of the Virgin by Spanish Old Masters, but one painting of the Murillo School probably had a real value. In another house we found a picture of Napoleon before which the inhabitants were burning a candle under the impression that the print represented an unidentified Saint. Maybe stranger personalities have been canonized before now.

Jan escaped from intimate touch with the people by making for the open country. He thus had fewer adventures than did I. Often, however, peasants spied him from the distance of a mile, and came to see what he was doing.

Once, when he had been painting on the cart-road near El Angel and had put a cart into his painting, a small boy followed him all the way home, shouting out to every one that he pa.s.sed:

”That is a painter! He painted a cart and horse; just as it went along; all in a flas.h.!.+”

We used to pin up our sketches on the wall of the house; because, as we intended to travel, we wished the sketches to become as dry as we could make them. This used to attract numbers of people, and usually the grilled window of our front room was occupied by a crowd of faces peering into the house. The fame of our picture exhibition spread over the country-side. People came from some distance to see the pictures; and if the front door was unlocked walked in, saluted us, and proceeded to go the round of the walls. At first we found this disconcerting, but with use much of our needless self-consciousness and desire for unessential privacy began to wear off.

As we left our front window open during the night for air, we were many times awakened by the voices of the picture-gazers who gathered at our window as soon as the day broke.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 14: ”She has painted my donkey, _my_ donkey.”]

[Footnote 15: 8.]

[Footnote 16: 8_s._ 4_d._]

CHAPTER XVI

VERDOLAY--CONENI