Part 17 (1/2)

”Well, fifty-five pesetas. Not a penny less and no more bargaining.”

Jan, to cut the scene short, agreed. The instrument was wrapped up in a paper bag. While Jan was paying over the money, Blas said:

”And you will give five pesetas to this gentleman, who is a poor man: and five pesetas to me also.”

He seized five pesetas of the money from the counter and pressed them on the little Professor. The latter, with girlish giggles, refused; but Blas, with the insistence of a drunkard, pressed his desire until, to quieten him, the little Professor slipped the money into his waistcoat pocket. Blas then demanded his own commission, saying that as he had been Jan's Professor, and as Jan had once mentioned the subject of the laud to him, he was fully ent.i.tled to his claim. But Jan, outwardly calm, inwardly annoyed with Blas, would not give him a halfpenny. At last Blas was begging:

”Well, at least give me a peseta to get a drink with.”

”You have had enough drink already,” said Jan.

He picked up the laud, and with farewells to Emilio, his wife and the little Professor we walked out of the shop, pus.h.i.+ng our way through the crowd which had gathered at the shop door.

On the following day we returned to Emilio's shop to apologize for the contretemps. We found both Emilio and his wife very disturbed by what had happened. They said that their regrets were eternal, and that it would have been better had we deferred the business matter until a better occasion.

”It was a disgraceful affair,” said Emilio, ”disgraceful; and to cap it all, after you had gone, Blas was most outrageous. We had actually to pay him two pesetas to go away.”

”We were afraid for our lives,” said Mrs. Emilio. ”He is a bad man, and one never knows what rogues he might have brought upon us.”

Though Jan did not believe much in the active danger of Blas, yet the terror of Emilio and of his wife was quite evident. So in the end he disbursed the five pesetas given to the little Professor as well as the two given to Blas. So that our laud actually cost us sixty-two pesetas, instead of the sixty for which we might have bought it without any bargaining.

With the little Professor we had made an engagement for the afternoon.

He was to give me a lesson on which I could study while we were away at Jijona. He came, feeling his way up our staircase. He shook hands with us and said that the affair of last night had greatly oppressed his spirit.

”I felt it much in my heart,” he said.

We explained to him that we were going away for a month, but that we would return to Murcia later, and that when we returned I would take lessons from him.

”My price,” he exclaimed (all his speech was exclamation), ”is one duro a month. I am not one of those villains who charge one price to one person and a different price to another. No, my price is fixed and unalterable. One duro, five pesetas, a month.”

Now, although this little man was probably as good a teacher as could be found in the town of Murcia, his price averaged about _twopence a lesson_.

We discovered later that the laud suffers not only from a ban of ”bad taste,” but also from a moral one. To-day its use in Spain is almost limited to the playing of dance music in houses of bad fame.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 19: Lovers.]

CHAPTER XX

ALICANTE

Our second experience in Spanish village life was to be at Jijona, a small town in the country near Alicante. Our friend had what he called a studio there, and this was at our service. Luis said that there was furniture in the studio but no cooking utensils or bed. After our packing-case bed in Verdolay, we determined to take with us nothing but a mattress and either to sleep on the floor or to buy planks locally. So we had packed our trunk with painting materials, crockery and clothes.

We had also made up a large roll of bedclothes and mattress such as emigrants travel with. Having risen with the dawn, our preparations were complete by the time at which the donkeyman who peddled drinking-water about the streets of Murcia called for us with his long cart. He was not quite satisfied with our roll, and with expert hands repacked it in a professional manner. But his long water-cart would only take our trunk and the rolled mattress, so, burdened with rucksacks, camera, guitar, thermos flasks and a rush basket containing crockery which would not pack into the trunk, and the laud, we walked the quarter of a mile to the station. Thus burdened, we expected more staring and laughter than before from the Murcianos, but, to our amazement, the people looked upon us with kindly eyes and wished us G.o.d-speed. Thus Spain reverses the manner of England.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Jan took his place in the ticket queue while I, a.s.sisted by a friendly porter, looked for seats in a third-cla.s.s carriage. The carriages were full enough despite the fact that we were in good time. Large numbers of children seemed to be travelling, and many of the pa.s.sengers were stretched out on the wooden seats, taking a snooze before the train should start. The divisions between the compartments were only breast high, and already animated conversations had begun between the pa.s.sengers who, from different compartments, shouted remarks to each other. In our compartment were a sandalled peasant stretched at full length, a bearded man with a huge bra.s.s plate on his breast and a shot-gun, evidently a gamekeeper, and a smart young man with patent leather boots and a straw hat. The last was reading a hook. On the platform we noted an important priest striding about, his black soutane covered with a silk dust-coat, and an old woman with a posy of bright flowers about twice as big as her head. The train was the centre of an excited crowd, the carriage full almost to bursting-point. As the time for departure came near most of those we had imagined to be our fellow pa.s.sengers got slowly down on to the platform; all the children disappeared. They had merely been taking advantage of the train's presence in the station to take a rest.